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ic  Betterment     -    All  Times  and  Places 


Civic  Lessons 


ro 


Mayor  Mitchells 
Defeat 


Why  every  democratically 
governed  people  can  find  en- 
couragement rather  than  dis- 
couragement in  New  York 
City's  vote  against  Fusion 
Reform  in  1^17 


By 

Eda   Amberfy    nnri    Wmiarn    IT     Allfvi 


INSTITUTE  for  PUBLIC  SERVICE 


New  York  City 


April  192  I 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/civiclessonsfromOOamberich 


^  '  \     >   5  .1     5      >  »  J  '      >     '>    J      '  1     >    >    '    »  ', 


^e 


CIVIC  LESSONS 

from 

MAYOR  MITCHEL'S  DEFEAT 


Editorials,  speeches,  news  items,  letters,  cartoons  and 
private  conversations  already  show  that  New  York  voters 
from  April  to  November  1921  will  be  almost  constantly 
asked  to  compare  the  Hylan  administration  of  1918-1921  with 
the  Mitchel  administration  of  1914-1917.  It  is  therefore  im- 
portant that  New  York  itself  and  the  rest  of  the  nation  re- 
member the  basic  facts  about  the  voting  in  of  the  Hylan  ad- 
ministration and  the  voting  out  of  the  Mitchel  administration. 
Did  the  516,000— of  671,000— New  Yorkers  who  voted  for 
other  candidates  than  Mayor  Mitchel  vote  against  reform  itself 
and  "deliberately  turn  their  backs  upon  and  ignore"  the  bene- 
ficial results  accomplished  by  Fusion  reform? 

If  genuine  reform  at  work  becomes  distasteful  there  is 
obviously  little  inducement  for  individuals  or  communities 
anywhere  to  work  for  reform  in  government. 

If,  on  the  other  hand.  New  York's  public  remained  stead- 
fast in  its  ideals,  if  in  1917  it  voted  against  rather  than  for 
evils  and  voted  for  rather  than  against  reform,  there  is  reason 
why  individuals  and  communities  everywhere  else  should  keep 
up  the  fight  for  truly  socially-minded,  efficient,   democratic 


government.  h 

.464ffbi 


•  •     •   •  «  •    • 

•  •  »  .  •  •  / 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

The  title,  Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat  in 
1917,  is  used  to  express  the  conviction  that  every  democratic- 
ally governed  people  in  the  world  can  find  encouragement 
rather  than  discouragement  in  the  reasons  for  New  York 
City's  vote  against  Fusion  reform  in  1917. 

Women  voters  especially  can  find  both  between-election 
and  also  polling-booth  use  for  these  civic  lessons  from  a  much 
advertised  defeat  that  is  too  little  understood. 

Since  the  motive  of  this  reminder  is  to  help  voters  and 
leaders  of  any  place  at  any  time  remember  what  was  clearly 
seen  just  aftef  the  election  of  1917,  the  reasons  for  Fusio^n 
Reform's  defeat  are  stated  almost  entirely  in  the  words  of 
headlines,  news  items  and  editorials  that  expressed  and  affect- 
ed public  judgment  in  1917.  With  few  exceptions,  further- 
more, the  story  is  told  by  strongly  pro-Fusion  and  pro-Mitchel 
speakers  and  organs. 

Because  this  attempt  to  draw  civic  lessons  from  Fusion 
Reform's  defeat  must  necessarily  deal  with  issues  that  were 
bitterly  controversial  in  1917,  some  readers  and  reviewers 
will  ask  for  the  attitude  of  the  authors  and  the  Institute  for 
Public  Service  toward  municipal  reform.  To  meet  such  in- 
quiry without  interrupting  the  story,  Exhibit  II  tells  briefly 
how  the  Institute  for  Public  Service  has  worked  for  efficient, 
socially-minded  government  in  city,  state  and  nation. 

Suffice  it  here  to  say  that  we  not  only  believe  in  reform 
but  believe  it  is  possible  to  get  it  and  to  keep  adding  tot  it  no 
matter  who's  elected,  wherever  voters  are  currently  given 
essential  facts  about  official  acts  and  community  needs. 

Cessation  of  Cooperative  Criticism,  page 
59,  was  the  major  and  chief  reason  for 
Mayor  Mitchel's  defeat.  For  a  summary  of 
civic  lessons  for  future  use  by  Ins,  Outs, 
Independents,  Teachers  and  Students  see 
page  84. 

2 


Mayor  Mitchells  Pre-Election  Record 

Fusion  Elected  in  1913  for  Its  Record 

The  nearest  approach  to  socially-minded,  highly  compe- 
tent government  on  a  large  scale  that  the  world  has  ever  known 
was  the  government  for  which  Greater  New  York  voted  in 
November  1913. 

The  winning  plurality  of  124,000  votes  was  not  a  vote  in 
the  dark.  It  was  not  a  landslide  for  new  phrase-makers,  glad 
handers  and  promisers.  On  the  contrary,  this  unprecedented 
plurality  was  a  re-election  foir  the  three  officers  elected  at 
large,  the  mayor,  comptroller  and  president  of  the  board  of 
aldermen.  While  it  is  true  that  the  size  of  the  plurality  was 
due  partly  to  a  particularly  weak  Tammany  ticket,  New  York 
accepted  the  vejdict  as  a  call  to  Fusion  officers  to  continue 
their  service. 

John  Purroy  Mitchel,  the  new  mayor,  had  been  elected 
four  years  before  as  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen  after 
three  other  years  as  investigator  and  commissioner  of  ac- 
counts when  he  had  seemed  to  the  people  a  friend  in  need  and 
in  deed.  With  his  work  the  public  had  identified  an  awakening 
of  citizens,  editors,  officials  and  employees  which  had  given 
the  whole  country  new  hope  for  municipal  government.  From 
his  work  had  come  the  removal  of  first  one,  then  a  second, 
then  a  third  borough  president  for  incompetence.  To  him 
most  of  all  the  public  credited  the  advertisement  of  the  fol- 
lowing three  useful  truths  about  citizens'  right  to  organize 
against  incompetent  government  in  New  York  iCity : 

1.  The  recall  of  an  inefficient  officer  can  be  started  by 
an  individual  or  a  group  without  an  election  and  with- 
out untold  delays  if  the  governor  receives  proof  that 
there  has  been  incompetence  and  waste. 

2.  It  is  not  necessary  to  prove  personal  corruption  in 
order  to  have  a  mayor,  comptroller,  borough  presi- 
dent, sheriff  or  police  commissioner  removed  for 
incompetence. 

3.  As  Governor  Hughes  said  in  his  message  removing 
Manhattan's  borough  president,  New  York's  governor 
can  and  should  remove  an  incompetent  elected  officer, 
even  if  a  voting  majority  wants  to  condone  his  mis- 
governing, because  "a  majority  no  matter  how  large 

3 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

has  no  right  to  impose  upon  a  minority  no  matter 
how    small    an    incompetent    and    wasteful    govern- 
ment." 
Because  he  had  investigated  more  departments  in  more 
ways  and  more  thoroughly  than  had  elsewhere  been  done  in 
America,  and  because  of  native  abilities  weighted  by  exper- 
ience in  serving  the  public,  he  brought  to  the  office  of  mayor 
greater  capacity  for  helping  New  York  City  and  all  America 
take  forward  steps  in  municipal  government  than  any  other 
elected  officer  had  ever  brought  to  any  big  municipal  or  state 
post  in  this  country. 

The  most  widely  unpopular  step  he  had  ever  taken — fur- 
thering an  investigation  of  the  Roman  Catholic  institutions 
then  receiving  public  funds — had  failed  to  defeat  him  in  1909 
when  he  was  elected  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen  and 
in  1913  when  be  was  elected  mayor  by  124,000  votes. 

The  significance  of  Greater  New  York's  returning  a  re- 
form administration  for  a  second  four  years  was  the  subject 
of  editorials  throughout  the  country.  (The  administration  was 
called  a  reform  administration  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Mayor 
Gaynor  had  been  elected  on  the  Democratic-Tammany  ticket, 
chiefly  because  the  majority  in  the  board  of  estimate  were 
Fusion  officers,  partly  because  for  many  months  after  Mayor 
Gaynor  was  shot  Fusion  furnished  the  acting  mayor,  but  also 
partly  because  Mayor  Gaynor  wdrked  with  Fusion  members 
for  many  reforms.) 

The  mayor-elect  himself  interpreted  Fusion's  election, as 
follows :  "This  is  not  a  personal  triumph  but  a  victory  for  the 
cause  of  good  government,  ..  But  the  fight  for  good  govern- 
ment has  just  begun  and  I  ask  for  the  militant  cooperation  of 
every  citizen  in  its  complete  accomplishment." 

''This  is  the  first  time,"  said  George  McAneny,  newly 
elected  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen,  ''in  the 
history  of  the  greater  city  that  a  non-partisan  administration 
has  succeeded  itself.  .  We  may  now  look  forward  to  a  steady 
improvement  in  the  government  of  the  city." 

Of  the  mayor's  associates  and  their  ability  to  help  him 
"make  New  York  City  the  best  governed  municipality  in 
America" — which  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  already  in  1913, 
certainly  so  far  as  large  municipalities  were  concerned — still 
another  pamphlet  might  be  written. 

4 


Fusion's  Own  Opinion  of  Fusion 


Of  16  votes  Fusion  reform  started  with  14.  There  seemed 
no  rift  in  the  lute. 

Never  had  this  or  any  other  American  city  chosen  officers 
with  as  reasonable  expectations  of  continuing  improvement  in 
government  and  increasing  public  support.  The  opposition 
that  voiced  itself  just  after  election  had  to  do  with  party 
politics  rather  than  with  the  city's  chances  for  good  govern- 
ment of  the  choicest  brand. 

Fusion  Reform's  Platform  of  1917 

on 

Fusion  Reform's  Performance 

The  Fusion  reform  platform  of  1917,  given  in  Exhibit  I, 
shows  what  a  committee  of  250  promoters  claimed  for  the  four 
years  1913-1917  and  what  they  and  their  candidates  promised 
for  the  next  four  years.  It  is  short.  We  hope  you  will  read 
it  now  to  see  what  Fusion  reform  felt  were  the  strongest 
things  it  could  say  for  its  stewardship. 

If  the  purpose  of  this  pamphlet  were  to  discuss  methods 
of  reform  rather  than  to  recall  the  causes  of  Fusion  reform's 
defeat  in  1917,  we  should  take  time  here  to  point  out 
How  deficient  this  platform  was  just  as  a  platform 
In  how  many  ways  it  failed  to  do  justice  to  Fusion's  best 
work 

How  it  evaded  issues  that  were  clearly  in  the  public  mind 
at  the  time  with  respect  tO'  the  next  four  years,  and  par- 
ticulary 

How  it  mis-used  its  opportunity  by  relying  on  generali- 
zation and  evasion  where  specific  proof,  specific  admis- 
sion and  specific  pledge  would  have  been  vastly  more  ef- 
fective. 

How  Bad  the  Defeat  Was 

For  the  three  Fusion  officers  elected  at  large  400,000  fewer 
votes  were  cast  in  1917  than  four  years  before. 

Fusion's  mayor  received  209,000  fewer  votes  for  re-elec- 
tion than  he  received  in  1913;  23%  of  the  total  vote  in  1917 
where  four  years  before  he  received  57% ;  a  plurality  of 
158,500  against  him  where  he  was  elected  by  a  pluraHty  of 
124,000;  9600  fewer  soldier  votes  than  his  winning  competitor 
or  a  little  more  than  one-fifth  the  total  soldier  vote. 

5 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

Fusicn's  comptroller  received  96,000  fewer  votes  in  1917 
than  four  years  before;  a  plurality  of  116,000  against  him  in 
place  of  a  plurality  of  45,000  for  him. 

Fusion's  candidate  for  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen 
received  almost  100,000  fewer  votes  than  his  winning  Fusion 
predecessor  in  1913;  a  plurality  of  98,000  against  him  in  place 
of  a  plurality  of  72,000  for  his  predecesor.  Although  this 
candidate  ran  against  the  most  popular  vote-getter  in  Tam- 
many Hall,  later  Governor  Alfred  Smith,  the  plurality  against 
him  was  18,000  smaller  than  the  plurality  against  Fusion's 
comptroller  and  60,000  smaller  than  the  plurality  against 
Fusion's  mayor. 

Fusion's  President  Marks  of  Manhattan  borough  was  also 
snowed  under.  He  gave  his  own  record  of  opposition  to  the 
majority  on  the  issues  which  defeated  them  no  chance  when 
he  consented  to  run  on  their  record  instead  of  his  own. 

Question :  Was  this  shift  of  votes  from  large  pro-Fusion 
pluralities  in  1913  to  losing  pluralities  in  1917  a  mere  shift 
of  fickle  affection  or  did  it  represent  moral  convictions?  Did 
the  people  go  back  on  Fusion  Reform  or  did  the  people  believe 
that  Fusion  Reform  had  gone  back  on  them? 

What  Voters  Were  Thinking  and  Feeling 

In  letting  these  pages  tell  their  story  of  what  voters  were 
thinking  and  feeling  when  Fusion  was  defeated  in  1917  we 
have  almost  entirely  omitted  anti-Fusion  charges  that  did  not 
appear  in  pro^Fusion  papers.  At  the  same  time  we  have  al- 
most entirely  omitted  pro-Fusion  arguments  that  do  not  ap- 
pear in  the  Fusion  platform. 

.,  If  our  readers  wanted  to  learn  the  merit  of  the  issues  for 
and  against  Fusion  in  1917  it  would  be  necessary  tO'  give  both 
sides  of  all  contentions  and  to  quote  thoroughly  from  both 
friends  and  foes  of  all  parties.  But  this  time  our  readers  are 
seeking  civic  lesscwis  from  the  minds  and  votes  that  defeated 
Fusion.  We  have  here  no  concern  whatever  with  the  votes  for 
Fusion.  That's  another  story  altogether.  Again,  if  we  were 
trying  to  portray  the  campaign  spirit  true  to  life  it  would 
not  be  safe  to  let  pro-Fusion  spokesmen  paint  the  picture  of 
Fusion's  defeat.  But  this  is  a  case  where  explanations  from 
friendly  sources  quite  thoroughly  cover  the  ground  without 
risk  of  over-coloring  or  over-statement. 

6 


As  Pro-Fusion  Newspapers  Reflected  Sentiment 

No  one  can  understand  why  so  many  recent  friends  of 
Fusion  reform  voted  against  its  ticket  in  1917  without  realiz- 
ing how  much  anti-Fusion  there  was  in  the  pro-Fusion  papers. 

Therefore  we  let  these  friendly  papers  tell  the  story  without 
trying  to  recall  the  extremes  of  language  and  cartoon  used  in 
anti-Fusion  papers. 

Five  Types  of  Thinking  and  Feeling 

among 

New  York's  Voters  in  1917 

It  will  help  us  get  the  civic  lessons  from  Fusion's  defeat 
in  1917  if  we  remember  that  there  were  five  distinct  types  of 
mind  under  the  influence  of  campaign  news  and  appeal: 

1.  The  partisan  mind  or  the  class  or  group  mind — 
willy  nilly,  bitter  ender,  at  any  cost,  under  all  cir- 
cumstances— that  voted  the  anti-Tammany  or  pro- 
Tammany  or  Republican  or  Socialist  ticket  no  matter 
what  the  issues  or  the  candidates. 

2.  The  venal  or  pliable  or  unthinking  or  alootf  mind  that 
acted  without  being  influenced  by  news  or  issues  or 
that  stayed  at  home  or  went  golfing  o^  election  day. 

3.  The  open-to-influence  mind  that  regularly  read  pro- 
Fusion  newspapers,  weeklies,  monthlies  and  adver- 
tisements and  that  associated  mainly  with  pro-Fusion 
talkers. 

4.  The  open-to-influence  mind  that  regularly  read  anti- 
Fusion  attacks  in  five  of  the  city's  twenty  odd  daily 
papers  having  about  half  the  total  readers. 

5.  The  international  mind  that  wanted  to  vote  against  or 
for  war,  against  or  for  Germany,against  or  for  Britain, 
or  for  Ireland. 

The  first  and  second  minds  did  not  swing  the  election. 
They  were  not  new.  They  had  existed  in  1913  when  Fusion 
reform  was  re-elected,  except  that  in  1913  there  was  no 
straight  Republican  candidate  to  poll  50,000  votes.  This  dif- 
ference, while  important,  did  not  swing  the  election  because 
if  all  the  Republican  votes  had  gone  to  the  Fusion  candidate 
he  would  still  have  lost  by  over  •100,000  votes. 

The  defeat  was  due  to  the  three  voters  whose  attitudes 
were  influenced  by  the  news  they  read  and  the  talk  they  heard. 

7 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

No  attempt  will  be  made  to  estimate  the  relative  import- 
ance of  the  three  impressionable  types  of  mind.  It  is  the  total 
result  which  is  explained  by  the  following  extracts  mostly 
from  pro-Fusion  news  and  editorials. 

Before  and  After  Election  Diagnosis 

by 
Fusion's  Own  Strongest  Supporters 

Ten  days  before  the  election  of  1917  the  editor  of  the 
Nation,  who  was  also  then  the  editor  of  the  New  York  Even- 
ing Post,  an  unremitting  reformer  and  for  years  an  inde- 
fatigable supporter  and  booster  of  Mr.  Mitchel,  gave  ten 
reasons  why  there  was  then  "only  a  fighting  chance  for  Mayor 
Mitchel  to  succeed  himself:" 

1.  Failure  to  make  the  plain  people  feel  that  he  is  their 
friend  although  he  has  been. 

2.  No  little  tactlessness. 

3.  Inadequate  supervision  of  real  estate  purchases. 

4.  The  greatest  tactical  mistake.  . .  (assertions  for  and  by 
.   Mr.  Mitchel)  that  a  vote  for  anyone  but  Mitchel  would 

be  a  pro-German  vote. 

5.  Failure     to     build     the    court    house     for    which     a 
[$12,000,000]  site  was  bought. 

6.  West  Side  plan.- 

7.  Overconfidence  and  inactivity  among  Mitchel's  back- 
ers before  Mitchel's  primaries. 

8.  The  almost  unanimous  support  of  financial  interests  is 
assiduously  used  against  him. 

9.  Subway  delays  due  to  a  state  body    [public  service 
commission]. 

10.     Not  a  little  hard  luck. 

You  will  notice  that  among  these  ten  reasons,  given  be- 
fore election  by  a  pro-Fusion  paper,  no  suggestion  appears 
that  the  people  of  New  York  had  wearied  of  reform, — of  ser- 
vice, social-mindedness,  honesty,  despatch,  forward  look,  ef- 
ficiency, pledge  keeping. 

The  day  after  election  the  New  York  Evening  Post's 
editorial  on  the  defeat  of  Mit;chel  said :  "It  was  a  black  eye  for 
the  city,  a  black  eye  for  reform  government.  .  .All  the  fine 
work  done  under  the  Mitchel  administration  during  the  four 

8 


After-Election  Explanations  by  Friends 

years  past  seems  to  have  1)een  trampled  upon  by  the  city." 
But  that  same  editorial  also  said :  ''Here  we  are  praising  and 
supporting  him  for  his  splendid  work  as  the  city  executive. 
Yet  he  was  behaving  these  weeks  precisely  as  the  head  of  an        \ 
administration  would  who  had  been  exposed  as  weak  or  cor-        I 
rupt  and  who  had  raised  patriotic  cries  in  order  to  divert  at-        ' 
tention  from  his  official  acts."*  ] 

Another  supporter,  the  New  Republic,  which  had  un-  i 
falteringly  backed  Fusion  reform  before  election,  said  of  the 
defeat :  "The  cause  was  lack  of  sympathetic  understanding  of  j 
popular  feelings  of  needs  and  little  social  vision... If  the  ; 
people  turned  against  Mayor  Mitchel  so  emphatically,  the  ; 
revolution  must  to  a  very  considerable  extent  be  the  fault  ; 
of  Mayor  Mitchel  and  his  advisors."  , 

The  Woman's  Municipal   League  which   before   election        ; 
was  given  a  great  deal  of  newspaper  space  for  its  support  of 
the  administration — and  which  was  headed  by  a  member  of        : 
the  Woman's  Committee  of  100  and  the  wife  of  the  mayor's        i 
chamberlain  and  most  intimate  advisor — wrote  in  a  bulletin 
which  the  newspapers  quoted :  "The  defeat  of  Fusion  was  al-        ■ 
most  fore-ordained  during  its  four  years  by  its  failure  to  carry 
the  public  along... and  by  fatal  class  limitations." 

The  pi'^sciit  president  of  the  borough  of  Manhattan,vD^^ 
Henry  II.  Curi'an,  an  influential  member  and  committee  chair- 
man and  later  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen  during  the 
Fusion  administration,  stated  at  a  board  of  estimate  meeting  ■ 
that  "oppressive  rules  and  ordinances. adopted  by  the  boards  j 
of  aldermen  and  estimate  in  the  previous  administration  \ 
[i.  e.,  Fusion  reform  1913-1917]  are  what  made  people  vote  [ 
the  former  administration  out  of  office."  \ 

Theodore  Roosevelt,  who  by  speech  and  pen  fought  hard 
for  Fusion  Reform's  success,  said  before  and  after  defeat  that        ; 
Fusion  defeated  itself  by  preventable  missteps  which  we  in- 
clude  among  the   reasons   that   are   noAv   going  to   be   cited, 
some  as  major  reasons,  others  as  minor  reasons.  ', 

Major  Reason  I 

"The  Fusion  Slush  Fund" 

"Perfectly  outrageous"  is  v/hat  a  member  of  the  Fusion 
campaign   committee   and   chairman    of   the   winning   Fusion 

9 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

committee  of  1913  called  the  1917  campaign  fund  of  about 
$2,000,000  five  days  after  election. 

"Perfectly  outrageous"  was  what  the  public  was  calling 
it  for  thirty  days  before  election  when  there  was  no  way  of 
knowing  its  exact  amount,  but  when  newspaper  and  billboard 
advertising  showed  that  it  was  costing  at  a  rate  which  would 
take  at  least  a  million. 

Full  pages,  half  pages,  quarter  pages  of  paid  advertise- 
ments every  day,  plus  expensive  billboards,  were  cited  to  il- 
lustrate the  widely  published  charges  that  so-called  '^interests" 
were  trying  to  confuse  and  swamp  the  public  mind. 

The  following  after-election  editorial  comments  in  three 
of  the  strongest  pro-Mitchel  newspapers  show  what  was  in 
the  public  mind  just  before  and  when  the  ballots  were  cast: 
"The  scale  of  expenditure  was  so  vast  and  the  waste  of  funds 
must  have  been  so  glaring  as  to  really  constitute  a  scandal," 
said  the  Evening  Post.  "A  scandal  such  as  that  to  which  the 
Fusion  managers  are  party  must  never  again  be  possible  in 
this  state.  No  justification  for  the  use  of  such  a  large  sum 
can  be  offered  however  honestly  in  the  interest  of  Fusion 
candidates,"  said  the  World.  "To  say  that  it  was  scandaloois 
tells  only  half  the  story.  The  amount  is  stupifying  since  it 
exceeds  the  sum  spent  by  the  presidential  campaign  committee 

Major  Reason  II 

The  Stolen  Republican  Primary 

and 
"Going  Back  on  the  Primary" 

The  admitted  outrageous  sum  spent  by  the  Fusion 
reform  committee  would  have  proved  a  frighful  handicap  even 
if  it  had  stood  alone  as  a  breeder  of  fear,  suspicion  and  re- 
sentment. 

But  it  did  no<t  stand  alone.  On  the  contrary,  it  followed 
close  upon  the  heels  of  a  stolen  primary  about  which  the 
salient  facts  were  these: 

1.  The  morning  after  the  vote  in  the  Republican  prim- 
aries, September  20,  1917,  a  majority  of  1700 
votes  for  Mitchel,  an  enrolled  Democrat,  was  an- 
nounced over  his  competitor,  ex-Senator  William  M. 
Bennett,  a  straight  Republican. 

10 


The  "Stolen"  Republican  Primary 

2.  When  ex-Senator  Bennett  cried  fraud  and  announced 
his  intention  to  appeal  for  a  recount,  pro-Fusion 
papers  and  backers  sneered  at  the  charge;  three  days 
later  Mayor  Mitchel  expressed  the  hope  that  there 
would  be  a  recount,  but  not  until  after  the  public  had 
been  told  of  case  after  case  in  different  parts  of  the 
city  where  votes  cast  for  Bennett  had  been  counted 
for  Mitchel. 

3.  On  the  re-count  ex-Senator  Bennett  was  given  a 
plurality  of  611  votes  and  evidence  was  found  of 
city-wide  fraud  by  election  officers. 

4.  From  this  date,  Sept.  29,  1917  to  election  day  there 
was  not  a  day  when  hundreds  of  thousands  of  readers 
were  not  told  over  and  over  again  of  the  stolen  pri- 
mary. Nor  was  there  a  day  when  Candidate  Bennett, 
now  the  official  candidate  of  the  Republican  party, 
did  not  meet  several  audiences  face  to  face,  tell  the 
story  dramatically,  ask  what  the  audiences  thought  it 
meant,  and  tell  what  sinister  intent  he  believed  was 
proved  by  this  legally  proved  theft. 

5.  Instead  of  outdoing  Tammany  Hall  and  (Candidate 
Bennett  in  excoriating  these  frauds,  instead  of  having 
the  Honest  Ballot  Association  work  as  it  never  had 
worked  before  to  prosecute  election  frauds  and  to 
find  the  man  higher  up,  the  leaders  and  backers  of 
Fusion  reform  put  the  soft  pedal  on  this  shameful 
fraud,  the  Honest  Ballot  Association  might  as  well 
have  been  in  Kamchatka,  the  pulpit  did  not  inter- 
rupt its  warnings  against  Tammany  to  condemn  the 
proved  fraud,  and  nobody  knows  in  how  many  minds 
amazement  turned  into  suspicion,  distrust  and  oppos- 
ing votes. 

6.  After  the  election  nearly  100  different  officers,  poor 
men,  served  sentences  in  the  penitentiary  for  count- 
ing Bennett  votes  for  Mitchel. 

7.  After  the  election  the  wealthy  chairman  of  the  Fusion 
comniittee,  then  indicted  for  violation  of  the  honest 
election  laws  by  the  same  grand  jury  whose  indict- 
ments sent  nearly  100  poor  men  to  jail,  raised  legal 
technicalities  that  began  with  the  claim  since  dis- 
missed— that  the  grand  jury  was  illegal  because  two 

11 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

notices  of  it  were  published  in  one  paper  during  the 
same  week  where  the  governor's  order  said  that  the 
two  announcements  should  be  in  two  successive 
weeks.  Thanks  to  numerous  other  technicalities  the 
indictrfient  is  still  pending. 
8.  The  whole  story  is  being  kept  fresh  in  the  mind  of 
one  large  voting  section  by  the  Brooklyn  Standard 
Union.  Editorial  after  editorial  speaks  of  "the  inter- 
ests w^hich  spent  a  slush  fund  of  over  $2,000,000  in  a 
few  weeks  to  buy  the  last  municipal  election  and 
paid  out  $400,000  to  purchase  the  nomination  for 
mayor  of  an  enrolled  Democrat  in  a  Republican 
primary" ;  or  again :  "The  deputy  comptroller  of  the 
state  came  over  to  Republican  headquarters  in 
Brooklyn  on  the  eve  of  the  primary  carrying  a  bag 
containing  thousands  of  dollars  which  was  distribut- 
ed where  it  would  do  the  most  good- -.to  pay  the 
crooked  election  officers  who  helped  count  out  the 
straight  Republican  and  count  in  the  enrolled 
Democrat." 

"Going  Back  on  the  Primary" 

Confusion,  mistrust  and  retaliation  were  engendered  and 
aggravated  by  another  outcome  of  the  Republican  primaries, 
namely,  the  abandonment  of  the  successful  Republican  can- 
didate by  a  great  part  of  the  Republican  organization  and  by 
"big"  Republicans.  Instead  of  abiding  by  the  primary  re- 
sults, that  is,  by  the  will  of  the  people  who  voted  in  the  pri- 
mary, leading  "big"  Republicans  in  Fusion  Reform  went  back 
on  the  whole  primary  idea,  refused  to  be  bound  by  it,  bolted 
the  successful  candidate  and  set  up  a  new  Fusion  Reform 
Party  with  Mayor  Mitchel  as  its  candidate.  Republican  head- 
quarters and  Republican  aid  were  denied  to  the  Republican 
candidate, — as  the  public  was  reminded  daily. 

If  a  winning  majority  or  its  candidate  had  been  accused 
of  fraud  or  irregularity  or  evil  intent  or  lack  of  idealism  the 
temporary  abandonment  of  the  primary  idea  or  the  temporary 
refusal  to  obey  a  primary  mandate  might  have  appeared  to 
the  public  as  idealism. 

But  in  this  case,  as  the  Republican  Standard  Union  told 
its  large   Republican  audience  every  single  day,  as  the  Re- 

12 


Much  Advertised  Real  Estate  Deals 

publican  candidate  said  every  day  and  as  the  Hearst  papers 
repeatedly  recalled,  the  bolters  were  not  the  defrauded  faction 
but  the  faction  for  whose  ticket  the  frauds  were  committed. 
Whatever  the  ethical  merit  was  of  rejecting  the  primary's 
verdict  and  candidate,  it  seemed  in  1917  to  ^hundreds  of 
thousands  of  voters  to  be  a  blow  at  the  primary  system  as 
well  as  a  desertion  of  the  American  tradition  that  the  majority 
must  prevail  and  that  party  losers  must,  like  others,  turn  in 
and  help  party  winners  win. 

Major  Reason  III 
Real  Estate  Deals 

"Inadequate  supervision  of  real  estate  purchases"  was  one 

of  the  ten  reasons  given  by  the  friendly  editor  of  the  Na- 
tion ten  days  before  election  why  Fusion's  candidate  for 
mayor  had  only  a  fighting  chance  to  succeed  himself. 

Two  days  before  this  statement  by  the  pro-Fusion  Na- 
tion the  pro-Fusion  Sun  and  other  papers  carried  a  news 
story  with  headings  like  this  from  the  Times:  ''Four  Are  In- 
dicted for  Neponsit  Sale  [including  one  Fusion  employee] 
Charged  with  Conspiracy  to  Defraud  City."  The  pro-Fusion 
World's  headline  read:  "Four  Men  Indicted  in  Connection 
with  the  City  Land  Deals  [three  real  estate  dealers  and  the 
Fusion  land  buyer]  Accused  of  Conspiracy  and  [the  Fusion 
land  buyer]  of  Neglect  of  Duty" 

The  effect  on  the  public  mind — including  the  pro-Fusion 
mind — of  these  and  similar  headlines  which  appeared  intermit- 
tently during  the  four  years  of  the  administration  and  sys- 
tematically during  its  last  ten  months,  the  reader  can  judge 
for  himself.  Papers  read  by  staunch  Fusion  supporters  and 
edited  by  its  ablest  advocates  told  such  stories  over  and  over 
again.  The  supplementary  insinuations  and  veiled  charges 
with  unveiled  cartoons  which  were  appearing  in  hostile  papers 
by  this  time  naturally  were  not  refutations  of  bad  cases 
printed  in  pro-Fusion  papers. 

The  indictment  just  before  election  of  men  about  whom 
charges  had  been  made  year  after  year  in  connection  with 
practically  every  real  estate  deal  by  Fusion  officers  turned 
denial  into  wonder,  fear  into  belief,  and  suspicion  into  con- 

13 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

viction  that  something  was  wrong  in  the  city  administration 
that  might  with  reasonable  attention  have  been  prevented. 

''Says  City  Owns  Half  of  Fort  Site"  is  a  headline  from  the 
Times  of  June  2,  1917.  The  land  in  question  was  land  which 
the  mayor  had  urged  the  state  to  purchase  for  fortifications 
at  $2,500,000  six  months  after  the  owners  had  sworn  that  the 
land  was  worth  only  $300,000.  Every  pro-Fusion  newspaper 
carried  a  similar  story. 

The  Fusion  real  estate  buyer  who  before  election  was  in- 
dicted for  conspiracy  and  fraud  testified  that  in  putting  a 
value  on  land  that  was  involved  in  his  indictment  for  fraud 
he  had  officially  employed  estimates  from  officers  of  the  very 
owning  company  who  had  loaned  him  $500  in  June  1916,  had 
carried  his  stock  speculations  for  $10,000,  had  shared  with  him 
ownership  in  a  Brooklyn  rink  and  had  taken  him  as  a  guest 
in  a  private  car  to  Arizona  in  April  1917.  All  papers  printed 
these  admissions. 

That  these  indicted  land  owners  had  repeatedly  gotten 
options  on  land  just  before  Fusion  officers  decided  to  buy  it 
for  the  city  and  then  had  sold  to  the  city  at  a  great  increase 
was  published  in  all  pro^Fusion  papers,  as  was  the  fact  that 
the  president  of  the  company  had  testified  before  the  legis- 
lature to  having  drafted  the  city's  contract  which  prevented 
the  maintenance  of  a  garbage  plant  anywhere  in  Jamaica  Bay 
near  his  company's  seashore  property. 

Less  than  three  weeks  before  election  the  Times  and  all 
other  papers  printed  the  statement  that  the  mayor  on  May  24, 
1917  had  attended  a  dinner  in  honor  of  one  of  the  later  in- 
dicted real  estate  men  which  cost  $140  a  plate  and  which  was 
also  attended  by  the  above  mentioned  later  indicted  city  real 
estate  buyer.  Eight  days  later  the  mayor's  admission  was 
printed  that  he  had  attended  the  dinner  but  that  instead  of 
costing  $140  a  plate  he  believed  it  "could  have  been  duplicated 
anywhere  at  $15  a  plate." 

This  news  was  thrown  on  the  screen  of  public  attention 
just  before  election,  right  in  the  middle  of  the  charges 
against  these  real  estate  men  and  the  Fusion  employee  which 
led  to  their  indictment  for  conspiracy  toi  defraud  the  city,  and 
while  the  nation  was  at  war  and  beseeching  every  bread- 
winner to  save,  save,  save.  The  mayor's  answer  to  it  was  to 
defend    the   real    estate    men    about    whom    such    disquieting 

14 


School  Troubles  Ran  Through  Three  Years 

charges  and  indictments  were  being  published  by  declaring 
that  the  most  talked  about  of  them  was  his  perso»nal  friend  and 
if  the  public  did  not  like  his  friends  it  could  go  to  hell, — an 
attitude  which  was  made  the  subject  of  repeated  speeches, 
editorials,  cartoons  and  private  conversations. 

In  the  background  of  the  public  mind  and  flashing  now 
and  then  on  this  same  screen  of  public  discussion  was  evi- 
dence that  in  its  1916  program  for  removing  the  New  York 
Central  tracks  from  Riverside  Drive  the  Fusion  group  pro- 
posed to  pay  nearly  five  times  as  much  ($1.65  a  square  foot) 
for  the  identical  land  which  it  proposed  to  buy  from  the 
New  York  Central  as  in  its  1913  plan  (35c.)  and  would  re- 
ceive a  little  more  than  one-fifth  (35c.)  as  much  for  land 
which  it  might  sell  to  the  New  York  .Central  as  the  railroad 
was  willing  to  accept  ($1.65)  in  1913  for  that  same  land. 

Major  Reason  IV 

Gary  Schools  and  School  Politics 

with 

"Utter  Disregard  for  Yelping  Taxpayers'* 

The  phrase,  "utter  disregard  for  yelping  taxpayers,"  is 
quoted  from  an  article  by  a  distinguished  pro-Fusion  writer 

in  a  national  magazine  issued  by  the  company  of  which  the 
Fusion  publicity  director  was  leading  executive  and  policy 
maker. 

The  attitude  of  utter  disregard  for  yelping  taxpayers  and 
similar  disregard  for  yelping  teachers,  yelping  principals, 
yelping  superintendents,  yelping  boards  of  education  and 
yelping  parents  was  acknowledged  by  Fusion's  friends  to  be 
a  major  reason  fo>r  reform's  self -collapse. 

Of  this  attitude  ex-president  Roosevelt,  then  fighting  his 
hardest  for  Fusion,  said  before  election :  *'The  so-called  Gary 
school  system  has  become  a  liability  where  properly  handled 
it  would  have  been  an  enormous  asset.  .  .The  parent  has  the 
right  to  be  consulted  on  anything  so  vital  as  its  child's  school- 
ing. Instead,  having  agreed  that  the  doctors  had  fixed  up 
the  medicine  that  would  be  good  for  the  school  patient, 
(Fusion)  decided  to  let  the  doctor  jam  it  down  the  patient's 
throat,  whether  the  patient  liked  it  or  not.  It's  too  late  now, 
but  we  cannot  blame  the  parents  of  the  children  on  half  time 

15 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

if  they  are  offended  or  if  they  resent  what  has  been  made— and 
by  Gary  school  defenders — to  appear  as  an  effort  to  keep 
their  children  in  the  place  of  hewers  of  wood  and  carriers 
of  water." 

The  New  Republic,  the  New  York  Evening  Post  and  the 
Woman's  Municipal  League  all — after  election — assigned 
the  way  in  which  the  Gary  school  plan  was  engineered  as  a 
chief  cause  for  Fusion  reform's  defeat. 

The  story  is  a  long  one  and  contains  many  civic  lessons 
for  practical  politicians,  reformers  and  other  educators.  As 
early  as  1915  it  was  clear  to  outside  observers  and  to  the 
mayor  himself  that  events  were  shaping  to  make  the. public 
schools  an  issue  in  the  next  mayoralty  campaign.  All  the 
post  election  diagnoses  were  made  to  the  city  officers  time 
and  again  prior  to  the  campaign  in  private,  in  public,  and 
through  incidents  that  pointed  only  one  way. 

In  1917,  schoolmen  and  wdmen  were  told  by  the  Fusion 
comptroller  from  a  public  platform  in  a  high  school — and  in 
press  reports — that  the  Gary  system  would  be  "forced  down 
your  throats  whether  you  want  it  or  not." 

Re-enforcing  such  statements  which  the  public  read  re- 
peatedly in  the  controversy  that  raged  for  nearly  three  years, 
were  news  items  to  the  effect  that  one  thousand  pupils  of  a 
Gar3nzed  school  went  on  strike,  smashed  about  100  school 
windows,  destroyed  school  books,  tried  to  prevent  other 
children  from  entering  the  buildings  and  stoned  policemen 
who  tried  to  disperse  them;  that  mothers  joined  and  helped 
them  and  shouted  derision  of  the  police ;  that  one  night 
5000  school  children  paraded,  shouting  disapproval  of  the 
Gary  system  as  they  marched  through  the  streets  and  carry- 
ing banners  which  read  "Dowii  with  the  Gary  System"  and 
"Can  the  Gary  System  and  Mitchel;"  that  a  city  wide  com- 
mittee was  circulating  all  of  these  charges  including  protests 
of  parents.  The  fact  that  political  opponents  were  acceler- 
ating the  "popular  uprisings"  did  not  make  stories  about  them 
less  costly. 

All  of  this  would  have  had  a  serious  enough  effect  if  the 
city  officials  had  changed  their  tactics  and  admitted  mistakes 
before  or  even  during  the  campaign.  Instead  of  admitting 
obvious  mistakes,  effort  was  made  to  "put  over"  the  program 

16 


The  Work-Study-Play  Plan  Was  Crippled 

by   paid   advertising,   paid   press   work,   paid   speaking,   paid 
management  of  excursions,  and  official  insistence. 

Two  citizen  committees  with  distinguished  names  and 
with  much  display  of  money  called  forth  specific  denials  from 
both  political  and  educational  sources. 

The  city  superintendent  who  had  repeatedly  opposed  the 
plan — wisely  or  unwisely  is  not  the  issue  here — was  quoted 
in  the  Democratic  campaign  pamphlet  as  follows:  "There  are 
in  this  plan  features  which,  forced  upon  us  as  they  have  been 
without  due  consideration  and  without  proper  preparation, 
have  worked  incalculable  injury  to  the  schools  and  to  the 
children  of  this  city." 

Reports  were  published  by  committees  of  educators  criti- 
cizing the  Gary  plan  as  unsuited  to  New  York  and  as  de- 
moralizing the  schools  where  tried. 

The  public  was  told  that  whereas  the  Gary  plan  was 
started  for  educational  improvement  it  was  ordered  spread 
over  the  city  as  a  means  of  cutting,  down  the  budget  before 
it  had  been  tried  out  even  in  two  schools.  "For  two  different 
schools  with  the  same  number  of  pupils  and  the  same  Italian 
population  and  having  even  first  cousins  as  principals,  the 
Gary  idea  in  1914  meant  an  expenditure  of  $343,000  for  play- 
ground, recitation  rooms  and  equipment  and  the  Gary  idea 
in  1917  for  the  less  favorably  situated  school  means  the  ex- 
penditure of  $16,000.  The  gap  between  $16,000  and  $348,000 
is  the  gap  between  what  the  Gary  idea  set  out  to  do  for  New 
York's  children  and  what  it  has  finally  boiled  down  to." 

Labor  organizations  issued  public  statements,  made 
speeches  and  distributed  hand  bills  which  claimed  that  it  was 
a  scheme  of  the  Rockefellers  and  other  capitalists  to  keep  the 
children  of  labor  down. 

Two  dramatic  incidents  furnished  civic  lessons  for  pub- 
licity agents  everywhere : 

1.  "May  a  mother  of  eleven  children  be  heard?"  Every 
eye  would  turn  no  matter  how  excited  both  audience 
and  speakers  were  at  various  "Gary  mass  meetings." 
For  a  mere  mother  of  eleven  children  any  American 
audience  will  answer  that  question  with  "I'll  say  you 
can."  Imagine  the  city's  amazement  when  it  learned 
that  this  mere  mother  of  eleven  children  was  receiv- 
ing $25  a  week  for  telling  of  her  conversion  to  the 

17 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

Gary  idea  and  moreover  had  no  children  in  the  Gary  " 
schools ! 
2.  In  1915  and  1916  a  woman  long  known  by  her  aggres- 
sive educational  work  for  vocational  guidance  and 
industrial  surveys  conducted  a  school  page  in  a  New 
York  newspaper.  Twice  a  week  this  page  carried 
eulogies  of  the  Gary  plan  and  later  eulogies  of  the 
Gary  specialist  plus  bitter  criticism  .of  the  board  of 
education  which  was  paying  him  $1000  a  week  each 
month  for  installing  the  Gary  plan.  Imagine  the  ef- 
fect upon  the  public  mind  of  being  told  over  and  over 
again  that  this  editor  was  also  the  specialist's  private 
secretary ! 

School  Politics  Widely  Advertised 

Mixed  up  with  the  mass  meetings,  joint  debates  and 
claims  for  and  against  the  Gary  system  itself  were  widely  pub- 
lished facts  about  the  interference  by  the  Fusion  board  of 
estimate  with  school  management  which  under  the  New 
York  City  charter  is  supposed  to  be  completely  independent 
of  the  board  of  estimate  after  the  mayor  has  once  appointed 
the  board.  There  was  nothing  new  in  these  controversies 
except  their  being  mixed  up  with  the  Gary  fight.  Steps 
which  at  other  times  would  have  attracted  little  attention 
were  used  to  win  votes  away  from  Fusion.     For  example: 

1.  One  of  the  principal  contributors  to  the  mayor's  cam- 
paign fund  of  1913,  little  known  to  New  Yorkers  was 
promptly  placed  on  the  board  of  education  and  within 
a  year  fotced  into  the  presidency. 

2.  In  eflPecting  the  reorganization  of  the  board  two  em- 
ployees of  the  Rockefeller  Foundation  who  had  been 
appointed  by  Mayor  Mitchel  to  the  board  of  educa- 
tion were  reported  in  the  newspapers  of  J^anuary  16 — 
and  over  and  over  again  during  the  campaign — as 
having  lobbied,  electioneered  and  actually  buttonholed 
members  on  the  floor  of  the  board  for  the  mayor's 
candidate. 

3.  Numerous  activities  by  so-called  Rockefeller  agents 
which  were  specific  as  to  place  and  time  were  given 
wide  and  continuous  publicity  for  the  sake  of  per- 
suading the  public  that  the  Gary  plan  was  a  scheme 

18 


Work-Study-Play  Plan  Not  Understood 

of  the  Rockefellers  and  other  money  interests  to  keep 
down  both  the  tax  rate  and  the  children  of  the  poor. 

4.  When  resigning  from  the  board  of  education  the  chief 
Rockefeller  agent,  whose  name  and  activities  had  fig- 
ured in  practically  every  claim  of  school  politics  dur- 
ing the  administration,  publicly  said  that  the  main 
purpose  of  his  going  on  the  board  had  already  been 
accomplished,  namely,  reorganization  of  the  board 
and  change  of  presidents. 

5.  All  through  the  school  year  1916-17  and  all  through 
the  mayoralty  campaign  of  1917  when  millions  of  dol- 
lars were  at  stake  and  the  welfare  of  a  million  chiklren 
in  New  York  City  alone,  the  General  Education  Board 
withheld  its  report  on  the  school  system  in  Gary 
upon  which  it  had  spent  $50,000  and  the  essentials  of 
which  could  easily  have  been  made  available  in  June 
1916  in  time  to  influence  New  York's  policy.  The 
fact  was  repeatedly  given  to  the  public  with  the  sug- 
gestion that  the  facts  were  being  witheld  by  the 
fofundation  officer  now  resigned  from  the  board  of 
education,  for  fear  that  their  publication  would  sup- 
port the  opposition  to  the  Gary  plan. 

6.  The  state  department  of  education  started  an  investi- 
gation of  the  Gary  system  at  work  but  did  not  make 
a  report,  which  silence  was  publicly  attributed  to 
Fusion  influences. 

7.  The.  president  of  the  board  of  education  when  in- 
structed by  the  board  to  appoint  a  committee  which 
would  impartially  state  the  real  situation  to  the 
public  named  a  committee  which  was  advertised  by 
himself  as  "a  small  harmonious  committee"  and  by 
others  as  "a  partisan  committee  to  conduct  political 
propaganda."      The    committee    never   reported. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  into  the  merits  of  the  Gary 
plan  in  New  York  and  elsewhere.  The  point  as  made  by  pro- 
Fusion  workers  like  President  Roosevelt,  the  Woman's  Mu- 
nicipal League,  the  New  Republic,  the  Evening  Post  and 
others — and  as  explained  by  the  Post  summary  of  what  hap- 
pened in  New  York — is  that  the  Gary  plan  was  never 
given  a  chance  to  root  itself  in  the  understanding  and  needs 
of  New  York  City.     Detroit  in  its  experiment  with  the  work- 

19 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

study-play  plan  has  permitted  no  one  to  teach  in  a  Gary  school 
who  did  not  volunteer  and  who  did  not  wish  to  make  it  a 
success.     New  York  used  force. 

That  this  was  a  tragedy  the  Institute  for  Public  Service 
has  maintained  from  the  first  and  with  anti-Fusion  and  pro- 
Fusion  fcTces  alike. 

Major  Reason  V 

"The  West  Side  Plan  * 

The  West  Side  plan  before  the  voters  in  1917  was  an 
agreement  which  Fusion  proposed  to  have  the  city  and  the 
New  York  Central  railroad  company  make  for  removing  the 
latter's  railro'ad  tracks  from  the  surface  along,  the  Hudson 
River  above  59th  Street  and  on  the  lower  west  side. 

This  West  Side  plan  was  one  of  the  ten  reasons  earlier 
quoted  why  the  Nation's  editor  asserted  ten  days  before 
election  that  there  was  only  a  fighting  chance  for  Mayor 
Mitchel  to  succeed  himself. 

The  Citizens  Union  and  the  City  Club,  both  actively  pro- 
Fusion  reform  bodies,  and  the  public  service  commission — 
state  appointed  but  then  headed  and  directed  by  men  who 
were  known  to  New  York  primarily  for  their  part  in  reform 
movements  including  Oscar  S.  Straus,  former  ambassador  to 
Turkey  and  former  secretary  of  the  U.  S.  department  of  com- 
merce and  labor — not  only  disagreed  with  the  majority  Fusion 
officials'  plan  but  opposed  it  with  expert  testimony  and  char- 
acterizations which  when  widely  and  repeatedly '  published 
were  bound  to  make  hundreds  of  thousands  of  voters  think  it 
was  against  the  public  interest. 

The  Citizens  Union  took  fourteen  pages  to  list  its  reasons 
for  changing  the  agreement  together  with  questions  which 
Fusion  officials  should  answer  in  time  to  compare  their  an- 
swers with  the  agreement  itself  and  its  engineering  plans 
before  final  action  should  be  taken. 

The  women  of  the  upper  west  side,  including  many  women 
actively  and  earnestly  for  Fusion,  organized  and  held  num- 
erous indoor  and  outdoor,  daytime  and  night-time  meetings  of 
protest,— and  after  the  plan  was  killed  worl^ed,  many  of  them, 
their  very  hardest  for  Fusion. 

Many  other  civic  agencies  in  all  boroughs  the  year  before 
election,  including  specially  organized  committees,  protested 

20 


The  West  Side  Plan  Lost  Votes 


by  speeches  and  resolutions  at  public  gatherings,  letters  to 
officers  and  newspapers,  printed  documents  and  dodgers 
against  the  plan. 

Nine  Vote  Losing  Admissions 

Official  admissions  made  at  public  hearings  and  in  other 
public  statements — and  widely  published  and  reiterated  in 
newspapers — were  calculated  to  lose  many  votes. 

1.  No  comphehensive  plan  for  the  port's  commercial  and 
terminal  development  and  not  even  a  plan  for  the 
pledged  market  terminals  was  included  or  had  been 
considered. 

2.  The  city  was  getting  what  a  bargaining  railroad 
would  concede — not  what  the  city  needed  for  its  fut- 
ure development. 

3.  The  city's  compelling  po-wer,  based  on  its  ownership 
of  street  ends,  had  been  ignored. 

4.  The  city  not  only  bargained  at  a  disadvantage  under 
legislation  then  existing,  but  opposed  others'  effort 
to  procure  greater  bargaining  power  through  legis- 
lation. 

5.  Two  of  the  city's  own  expert  engineers — Milo  R. 
Maltbie  and  Delos  F.  Wilcox,  two  of  the  country's 
most  noted  authorities  on  permit  and  franchise  prob- 
lems— had  not  even  been  consulted  in  preparing  the 
plan  although  they  were  in  the  city's  employ  and 
could  have  been  used  for  the  asking. 

6.  A  16-page  pamphlet,  of  which  8000  copies  were  issued 
by  the  comptroller,  contained  inaccurate  and  mis- 
stated facts  concerning  the  proposed  agreement. 

7.  A  statement  issued  to  newspapers  included  a  photo- 
graph which  misrepresented  what  the  railroad  under- 
took to  do  in  restoring  the  river  front,  and  after 
erasing  $300,000 — the  altogether  too  small  amount 
stipulated — inserted  the  word  ''enough ;"  and  this 
official  statement,  in  the  name  of  Fusion  reform 
officers,  was  according  to  the  comptroller  prepared 
by  someone  not  in  the  city's  employ. 

8.  The  two  large  oil  paintings  purpo'rting  to  illustrate 
the  west  side  plan  ''before  and  after  taking,"  which 
were  hung  for  weeks  in  the  New  York  Central's  pas- 

21 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

senger  terminal  where  thousands  of  persons  would 
view  them  daily,  and  which  were  later  admitted  to 
misrepresent  both  present  conditions  and  the  changes 
which  would  result  from  the  plan,  were  contributed 
and  hung  there  by  the  mayor's  dock  commissioner 
who  was  also  a  member  of  the  port  and  terminal  com- 
mittee that  framed  the  plan. 
9.  Favorable  editorials  which  preceded  publication  of 
the  plan  itself  were  based  upon  editorial  understand- 
ing that  was  gained  at  a  luncheon  and  exhibition  of  a 
model  of  the  new  plan  that  cost  $3000  of  taxpayers' 
money  and  in  several  respects  misrepresented  the 
plan  itself, — which  model,  75  feet  long,  was  later  ex- 
hibited at  the  Grand  Central  Station. 

The  candidate  for  comptroller  who  opposed  the  Fusion 

reform   candidate   was   known   to   the   general   public  almost 

exclusively  for  his  opposition  to  the  west  side  plan.  He  re- 
ceived a  plurality  of  116,000. 

What  Were  the  Merits  of  the  Plan? 

Any  reader  wishing  details  of  both  sides  may  obtain  them 
upon  application. 

Shorn  of  campaign  bitterness,  personalities  and  insinua- 
tions the  essence  of  the  opposition  was: 

1.  That  the  city  was  paying  five  times  as  much  for  real 
estate  as  the  railroad  would  accept  in  1913. 

2.  That  the  plan  would  prevent  the  development  of 
facilities  for  other  railroads  on  the  west  side  of  Man- 
hattan, thus  giving  the  New  York  Central  exclusive 
control  of  the  water  front  in  perpetuity. 

3.  That  it  would  cost  the  city  many  millions  in  leases, 
franchises,  taxes,  etc. 

4.  That  the  proposed  elevated  railroad  down  the  whole 
west  side  below  59th  was  unnecessary  and  would  be 
a  civic  crime. 

5.  That  the  plan  contained  no  provision  for  the  proper 
restoration  of  the  park. 

6.  That  the  plan  failed  to  provide  for  markets  and  proper 
terminal  facilities. 

22 


The  West  Side  Plan  Evaded  in  Platform 

It  was  Fusion  leaders  themselves  who  three  years  earlier 
called  the  proposed  elevated  railroad  for  the  lower  west  side 
"a.  civic  crime"  which  phrase  was  turned  against  Fusion  in 
1917. 

It  was  the  mayor  himself  who  said  of  the  proposed  land 
exchange  by  which  in  1916  the  city  was  to  accept  35c.  where 
three  years  before  the  railroad  offered  to  pay  $1.65  a  square 
foot,  that  those  figures  themselves  were  enough  to  prevent  the 
plan's  going  through. 

It  was  Governor  Whitman  who  said  when  asked  to  veto 
a  bill  which  had  been  unanimously  passed  over  the  mayor's 
veto  and  which  took  jurisdiction  over  the  west  side  plan  away 
from  Fusion  officers  and  gave  part  control  to  the  state  ap- 
pointed public  service  commission :  "Rarely  has  a  measure 
of  large  importance  come  before  me  with  so  little  substance  in 
the  arguments  against  it,  and  with  so  slight  a  showing  of 
popular  spirit  and  numerical  strength  in  the  opposition." 

In  the  face  of  such  opposition  and  almost  continuous 
publicity  running  through  two  years  the  written  and  spoken 
defense  of  the  plan  lost  many  votes  which  it  was  intended 
to  win : 

1.  The  typical  argument  which  pro-Fusion  writers  in 
national  magazines  employed  was  that  the  proposed 
agreement  was  **a  bargain"  which  the  mayor  thought 
was  ''commercially  advantageous  to  the  city  and  finan- 
cially advantageous  to  the  city  government." 

2.  The  Fusion  platform  itself,  instead  of  frankly  admit- 
ting mistakes  which  had  been  made  in  the  west  side 
plan,  never  mentioned  it,  although  it  was  an  envelop- 
ing and  pervading  issue.  The  platform  never  reached 
it  even  indirectly  until  the  66th  line  and  then  gave 
14  lines  to  promises  to  deal  with  the  w.est  side  prob- 
lem as  if  no  trouble  had  ever  existed,  no  work  had  ever 
been  done  and  no  proposal  had  been  in  the  public 
mind. 


23 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

Major  Reason  VI 
The  Catholic  Charities  Controversy 

For  the  first  time  in  this  narrative  it  becomes  difficult  to 
let  this  story  tell  itself  briefly  in  the  words  of  Fusion's  own 
backers.  Because  this  controversy  involved  a  distinct  and 
easily  consolidated  group,  and  because  it  concerned  religious 
affiliations,  opposition  became  so  intense  and  personal  as  to 
amount  almost  to  "religious  frenzy."  Within  a  few  weeks  the 
controversy  developed  phases  like  wire-tapping  by  police  that 
aroused  indignation  and  fears  more  primitive  even  than  church 
feeling  and  affected  persons  with  no  church  loyalty.  The 
main  undisputed  facts  are  these : 

1.  In  the  first  weeks  of  1916  a  special  state  examiner 
was  appointed  by  Governor  Whitman  to  conduct 
public  hearings  in  New  York  on  charges  that  had 
been  preferred  against  the  secretary  of  the  state  board 
of  charities  by  Fusion  reform  officials  acting  in  the 
name  of  the  mayor  but  in  his  absence. 

2.  These  charges  were  against  a  state  officer  for  neglect 
of  duty  in  connection  with  Catholic  and  other  private 
charities  and  were  distinctly  not  against  the  charities 
themselves. 

3.  In  attempting  to  make  out  a  case  against  the  state 
officer  certain  allegations  were  made  in  respect  to  14 
non-Catholic  and  12  Catholic  child  caring  institutions 
which  had  been  investigated  nearly  two  years  before 
by  Fusion's  charities  commissioner  to  see  how  they 
were  treating  the  children  for  whose  care  the  city 
paid. 

4.  Among  the  first  news  items  from  these  hearings  was 
one  variously  headlined  to  the  effect  that  in  one 
Catholic  institution  ''orphans  and  pigs  were  fed  out 
of  the  same  utensils." 

5.  7000  copies  of  a  pamphlet  that  reproduced  these  and 
other  disparaging  headlines  and  stories  were  dis- 
tributed throughout  the  state,  and  newspapers  repeat- 
ed and  commented  upon  them. 

6.  700,000  pamphlets  of  denial  and  resentment  were  is- 
sued from  Catholic  sources  as  an  antidote  to  the 
alleged  anti-Catholic  pamphlet. 

24 


The  Charities  Controversy  Lost  Votes 

7.  In  quick  succession  there  followed  testimony  and 
newspaper  items  of  assertion  and  denial  that  the 
Catholic  charities  were  condoning  mis-treatment  of 
children  and  were  spiriting  witnesses  out  of  town, 
were  trying  to  keep  the  truth  from  the  public,  had 
tried  to  block  the  examination  of  institutions  in  1914, 
etc,  etc. 

8.  Final  investigation  was  made  to  seem  the  personal 
affair  of  every  citizen  by  printed  reports  and  admis- 
sions that  the  Fusion  police  department  under  the 
direction  of  Fusion's  charities  commissioner  had  been 
for  some  time  systematically  "tapping  the  wires"  or 
"listening  in'*  on  private  telephone  talks  of  persons, 
Catholic  and  non-Catholic,  religious  officers  and  lay- 
men, who  were  concerned  in  proving  or  disproving 
charges  against  the  state  officer  and  related  charges 
against  Catholic  institutions  as  they  had  been  found 
in  1914. 

'Without  going  farther  the  reviewer  has  seen  that  there 
were  here  all  the  elements  necessary  to  create  vast  blocks 
of  opposition  and  to  create  fear,  regret  and  disapproval 
among  many  inveterate  friends  of  reform  who  believed  in- 
stinctively and  by  training  that  such  wire  tapping  was  a 
menace  to  personal  and  political  liberty. 

The  state  of  mind  among  groups  of  citizens  non-Catholic 
as  well  as  Catholic  may  easily  be  recalled  from  the  following 
few  facts : 

1.  The  state  Bar  Association,  without  mentioning  this 
wire 'tapping  or  another  much  advertised  case  of  wire 
tapping  not  connected  with  the  charities  controversy, 
shortly  after  the  public  hearings  closed  and  the  fires 
of  public  controversy  cooled,  passed  resolutions — 
which  were  almost  universally  commended  in  editor- 
ials that  circulated  widely — that  both  condemned 
wire-tapping  and  asked  the  legislature  to  pass  laws 
which  would  permit  it  only  where  the  courts  had  de- 
cided that  public  safety  required  it. 

2.  The  anti-Fusion  reform  cartoonists,  editors  and 
speakers  never  let  up  on  this  issue,  so  that  anyone  who 

in  mid-winter  1916  had  taken  sides  against  Fusion's 

25 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

handling  of  this  matter  found  himself  militantly  ir- 
ritated again  at  election  time. 

3.  A  smaller  number  recalled  one  Fusion  employee's 
testimony  at  the  hearings  that  the  pamphlet  which 
so  enraged  and  wounded  Catholics,  both  leaders  and 
followers,  was  printed  from  private  funds  chiefly  raised 
by  the  Fusion  commissioner  of  charities,  and  was 
printed  and  distributed  after  those  issuing  it  knew 
that  the  headline  about  oirphans  and  pigs  eating  from 
the  same  bowl  was  not  only  untrue  but  was  without^ 
the  slightest  foundation. 

4.  Others  in  larger  numbers  remembered  and  kept  re- 
stating the  fact  that  the  investigation  which  was 
made  in  1916  in  the  hope  of  convicting  a  state  officer 
of  negligence  had  been  finished  over  a  year  before 
and  that  homes  found  below  par,  both  Catholic  and 
non-Catholic 

5.  had  permitted  the  investigation, 

6.  had  answered  all  the  questions  asked  them, 

7.  had  accepted  the  city's  conditions  for  future  pay- 
ments, 

'  8.     had  acted  upon   the  city's  recommendations  and  in- 
structions, 

9.     had  through  this  year  been  under  the  constant  super- 
vision of  the  city  authorities  and  recognized  as  legally 
"     and  morally  entitled  to  city  confidence  and  payments. 

Although  this  issue  was  virulent  and  epidemic  in  the 
mid-summer  of  1917  before  election  and  called  for  justifica- 
tion or  regret  for  official  action  according  to  the  matured 
judgment  of  Fusion  supporters  in  1917  the  Fusion  platform  did 
not  mention  it.  The  only  reference  was  this :  "Conditions  in 
private  charitable  institutions  have  been  greatly  bettered  with 
their  cooperation." 


i:c 


The  "Loyalty"  Issue  Lost  Votes 


Major  Reason  VII 

"Hearst-Hylan-Hohenzollern" 

"Hearst-Hylan-Hohenzollern,"  as  issue  and  slogan,  ap- 
peared first  in  Mayor  Mitchel's  acceptance  of  the  nomination 
tendered  him  for  pro-Fusion  by  ex-president  Roosevelt,  ex- 
governor  Hughes,  ex-secretary  of  commerce  and  then  public 
service  commissioner  Straus,  et  al,  on  the  steps  of  the  city 
hall  October  1,  1917. 

"Anti-war  horde  or  the  straight  American  young  stal- 
wart," said  the  Fusion  Flashlight  in  its  first  issue.  The  same 
editorial  said:  "If  the  independent  voter  of  New  York  blinks 
the  issue  ctf  war  and  peace,  if  scavengers  are  let  in  to  gnaw 
our  sinews,  if  the  anti-war  vote  determines  the  election,  the 
city  will  have  to  answer  for  it  to  the  country ..  .The  answer 
must  be:  We  let  the  Hearst-Tammany  Plunderbund  and  hy- 
phenated enemies  within  our  city." 

"The  Supreme  Issue"  which  took  the  first  181  lines  and 
later  21  lines  or  nearly  one-third  of  Fusion's  platform  was 
said  to  be  the  loyalty  issue.  "Organized  municipalities... 
must  not  be  controlled  or  influenced  by  enemy  sympathizers 
.  .  .The  government  of  the  great  city  of  New  York  must  be. . . 
abo»ve  all  intensely  loyal  and  intensely  American.  .  .  [if  Mitchel 
is  re-elected]  traitor  and  traitorous  agitations  cannot  thrive 
within  the  city's  boundaries.  .  .We  call  upon  all  true  Ameri- 
cans to  continue  Mayor  Mitchel  and  Fusion  administratio»n." 

"A  vote  for  Mayor  Mitchel  is  a  vote  for  the  U.  S.  A." 
was  the  title  of  a  Fusion  pamphlet. 

"Germany  will  be  encouraged  and  strengthened  in  her 
warfare;  [if  Mitchel  is  defeated]  many  of  the  young  men 
whom  we  are  sending  across  the  Atlantic  to  fight  for  us  will 
pay  with  their  lives  for  that  encouragement  to  our  enemy/' 
wrote  EHhu  Root  to  James  Sheffield  as  quoted  in  the  Fusion 
Flashlight  and  the  press. 

"Those  who  are  for  the  United  States.  .  .will  vote  for 
Mr.  Mitchel.  Those  who  favor  a  German  victory  will  not," 
wrote  Judge  Alton  B.  Parker  for  quotation. 

Huge  billboards  were  covered  by  a  poster  of  a  soldier 
asking  for  votes  for  Mitchel,  with  Hearst  and  Germany  stand- 

27 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

ing  together  in  the  background.  So  repugnant  was  this  pos- 
ter even  to  many  pro-Fusion  voters  that  it  was  taken  down 
after  being  up  only  one  day,  but  not  in  time  to  prevent  its 
losing  votes. 

"Mayor  Mitchel,  our  fighting  mayor"  (with  Mitchel 
standing  behind  two  American  flags)  "Keep  him  on  the  job," 
headed  a  full  page  advertisement  on  October  1. 

"Vote  for  the  American  who  is  pledged  to  all  for  which 
our  men  in  Europe  are  dying,"  read  a  paid  advertisement  as 
late  as  November  5,  the  day  before  election. 

Posters  of  the  civilian  mayor  in  uniform  were  placarded 
in  the  city  and  in  army  camps, — a  fact  of  which  much  was 
madfe  in  hostile  papers,  in  camp  talk  and  elsewhere. 

"The  one  and  only  real  issue  in  this  campaign,"  said  the 
mayor  himself  to  soldiers  at  Camp  Upton,  "is  one  of  plain 
Americanism  as  against  disloyalty,  pro-Germanism  and  sur- 
render." 

The  vote  losing  effect  of  this  issue — ^four  out  of  five  voting 
soldiers  voted  against  Mitchel — was  freely  asserted  in  after 
election  comments  by  many  who  most  actively  supported 
the  Fusion  ticket  before  election : 

"Thousands  who'  voted  against  Mitchel  sincerely  believe 
that  his  defeat  meant  a  victory  for  democracy  and  popular 
government.  This  was  partly  due  to  his  inexcusable  bigotry 
in  claiming  during  the  campaign  that  his  particular  brand  of 
patriotism  was  the  only  kind  and  all  who  opposed  him  were 
miscreants-  and  traitors,"  said  a  widely  circulated  bulletin  of 
the  Womens  Municipal  League  which  worked  hard  for  Fusion 
success,  among  whose  members  were  also  many  members  of 
the  Women's  Committee  of  100  for  Fusion,  and  whose  presi- 
dent was  wife  of  the  mayor's  former  chamberlain  and  most 
intimate  advisor. 

"Most  of  the  Hylan  [democratic  candidate]  and  Hillquit 
[socialist  candidate]  support  consisted  of  undiluted  anti- 
Mitchel  votes,  cast  by  men  who  resented  the  attempt  made 
by  one  whom  they  took  to  be  a  class  candidate  to  set  himself 
up  as  the  only  pure  and  undefiled  embodiment  of  patriotism 
.  . .  He  insisted  on  soliciting  votes  as  a  man  who  was  a  better 
patriot  than  the  other  candidates  and  never  succeeded  in  mak- 
ing this  issue  plausible  and  popular,"  said  an  editorial  in  the 
pro-Fusion  New  Republic. 

28 


Loyalty'*  Issue  Lost  Votes 


The  New  York  World,  one  of  the  most  important  pro- 
Fusion  papers,  did  not  wait  until  after  election  to  sooind  its 
warning  but  said  editorially  before  election:  "We  could  think 
of  nothing  more  mischievous  than  the  American  issue  that 
some  of  our  Fusion  friends  are  trying  to  raise." 

The  New  York  State  Federation  otf  Labor  sent  a  letter  to 
the  trade  unionists  of  Greater  New  York  before  election 
which  declared :  "W^e  must  not  allow  the  issues  and  many 
grievances  of  the  wage  earners  against  the  administration  of 
Mayor  Mitchel  and  Comptroller  Prendergast  to  be  lost  sight 
of  by  unfair  attacks  upon  Our  patriotism  and  loyalty." 

Nathan  Straus,  philanthropist,  known  to  New  York's 
millions  for  his  twenty  year  campaign  for  compulsory  pas- 
teurization to  make  milk  safe  for  babies,  wrote  to  the  Demo- 
cratic candidate  in  an  advertisement  which  appeared  in  both 
pro-Fusion  and  anti-Fusion  papers  the  morning  of  the  elec- 
tion: "There  is  nothing  more  unjust  than  the  attacks  upon 
your  Americanism  and  your  loyalty,  and  your  friends  know 
that  and  the  people  generally  understand  it." 

The  Courier  des  Etats  Unis  had  an  editorial  October  31, 
1917,  which  was  reproduced  extensively  in  the  anti-Fusion 
press:  **We  denounce  to  all  clear  thinking  electors  the  con- 
temptible manoeuver The  Fusion  com- 
mittee must  have  been  sadly  lacking  in  arguments  in  favor  of 
its  candidate  when  it  decided  to  play  this  vulgar  farce  which 
is  offered  to  us  daily.  Mayor  Mitchel  was  elected  on  a 
municipal  program  and  it  is  on  a  municipal  program  that  the 
election  must  be  decided." 

Again  the  reader  is  reminded  that  the  question  in  1921  is 
not  how  the  people  of 'New  York  should  have  felt  in  1917,  but 
how  considerable  numbers  of  them  did  feel  and  talk  with 
respect  to  the  loyalty  issue.  As  shown  later  the  fact  that 
newspapers  outside  of  New  York  tried  to  make  this  the  issue 
did  not  decrease  disbelief  in  and  regret  for  the  issue  within 
New  York  among  many  pro-Fusion  and  independent  voters. 

One  of  the  important  things  to  be  remembered  is  that 
this  issue  tended  to  solidify  and  galvanize  against  Fusion 
whatever  votes  would  come  under  the  head  of  pro-German  and 
Irish-anti-British. 

29 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

Major  Reason  VIII 
Budget  Pledges  and  Budget  Claims 

"We  can  reduce  the  cost  of  government  by  many  millions 
a  year.  .  .We  would  show  a  great  saving  the  first  year.  .  .1  do 
know  that  there  is  room  for  saving  a  good  many  millions  of 
dollars  a  year  for  the  city... If  the  mayor's  departments  had 
done  as  well  [in  1913]  as  the  borough  presidents'  the  budget 
for  last  year  would  have  been  $15,000,000  lower  than  it  was 
...  I  shall  not  talk  economy  and  boost  the  budget.  I  shall 
save  the  money  of  tax-payers  and  translate  some  of  that  sav- 
ing into  service  for  the  public." 

Such  was  one  of  the  pre-election  pledges  made  by  (Candi- 
date Mitchel  in  1913.  It  was  kept  on  the  front  page  and  front 
seat  by  both  Fusion  and  anti-Fusion  four  years  later.  Fusion 
claimed  that  its  budget  pledge  had  been  kept  beyond  the 
letter.  Anti-Fusion  claimed  that  budget  pledges  had  been 
broken  in  both  letter  and  spirit. 

Perhaps  it  was  this  issue  which  the  Evening  Post's  presi- 
dent had  in  mind  when  ten  days  before  election  he  listed 
as  one  reason  why  there  was  only  a  fighting  chance  to  re-elect 
Fusion  "not  a  little  hard  luck."  At  any  rate  it  was  certainly 
hard  luck  fo>r  Fusion  that  in  face  of  its  many  actual  economies 
so  many  of  its  budget  claims  were  easily  punctured. 

So  far  as  were  recorded  by  election  time  1917  the  Fusion 
official  figures  for  1914  and  1916  are  repeated  here  for  future 
reference.  The  budget  fdr  the  departments  whose  heads  were 
appointed  by  the  mayor  at  his  pleasure  fell  from  $59,200,000 
in  1914  to  $57,180,000  in  1916,  a  diflference  of  $2,020,000.  The 
total  amounts  spent  by  these  departments,  including  budget 
appropriations,  special  revenue  bonds  and  special  funds,  fell 
from  $64,240,000  to  $63,550,000  a  decrease  of  $690,000. 

The  budgets  of  the  departments  whose  trustees  were  ap- 
pointed by  the  mayor  for  a  term  of  ofiice  greater  thari  his  own 
and  who  were  removable  only  upon  charges — including 
Bellevue  and  allied  hospitals,  the  public  schools,  the  men's 
College  of  the  City  of  New  York  and  the  women's  Hunter 
College— increased  from  $40,610,000  to  $41,870,000  or  an  in- 
crease of  $1,260,000.  Their  total  expenses  from  all  funds 
increased  from  $40,690,000  to  $42,050,000,  a  gain  of  $1,360,000. 

30 


Budget  Increases  Where  Decreases  Were  Promised 

The  total  expenses  for  other  boards  and  commissions 
named  by  the  mayor,  like  the  art  commission,  bo^ard  of  in- 
ebriety, board  of  child  welfare  (new),  etc,  grew  from  $137,000 
in  1914  to  $348,000  in  1916. 

Manhattan  borough's  total  cost  decreased  from  $2,750,000 
to  $2,620,000;  Bronx  decreased  from  $1,200,000  to  $1,150,000; 
Brooklyn  decreased  from  $2,118,000  to  $2,057,000. 

A  $3,000,000  saving-  in  administrative  costs  from  1914  to 
1916  was  the  claim  that  figured  most  frequently  in  campaign 
discussions.  Instead  of  a  $3,000,000  decrease  there  was  an 
actual  increase  of  nearly  $900,000.  Had  this  small  increase 
been  called  an  increase  and  contrasted  with  both  the  claims 
of  increased  service  rendered  and  previous  money  increases 
the  opposition  would  have  had  a  poor  hearing.  But  to  call 
an  increase  a  decrease  played  into  the  hands  of  anti-Fusion 
even  when  the  sums  involved  were  small.  For  example,  this 
particular  claim  was  not  only  flatly  denied  but  was  held  up 
by  anti-Fusion  as  a  deliberate  fabrication, — was  cited  for  ex- 
ample as  one  of  the  "real  reasons  why  organized  labor  does 
not  want  Mitchel"  by  the  State  Federation  of  Labor. 

Instead  of  giving  up  a  claim  which  only  placed  it  at  a 
disadvantage  by  focusing  the  budget  talk  on  budget  totals, 
Fusion's  spokesmen  kept  on  claiming  a  $3,000,000  saving 
where  a  $900,000  increase  was  easily  proved. 

As  a  specific  disproof  of  budget  decrease  was  cited  the 
following  comparison  of  the  promised  $15,000,000  lowering 
with  the  actual  budgets : 

$192,710,000  was  the  1913  budget  which  fhe  mayor 
said  might  have  been  reduced  $15,000, 
000  if  his  predecessor's  departments  had 
done  as  well  as  other  divisions  of  city 
government. 

$192,990,000  was  Fusion's  1914  budget, 

$198,990,000  was  Fusion's  1915  budget, 

$212,960,000  was  Fusion's  1916  budget, 

$211,110,000  was  Fusion's  1917  budget, 

$816,050,000  was  Fusion's  four  year  budget, 

$204,010,000  was  Fusion's  average  budget, 
$18,400,000  was  the   excess   of   Fusion's    1917   budget 
over   its   inherited   budget. 

31 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

"The  Court   House   Muddle'* 

A  spectacular  item  that  ran  through  budget  discontent 
was  Fusion's  failure  to  build  the  court  house  for  which  a 
$12,000,000  site  had  been  bought.  Being  but  a  stone's  throw 
from  City  Hall  this  spot  became  an  eyesore  and  an  almost 
daily  visitor  in  the  news  columns.  If  action  had  been  taken, 
if  it  had  only  been  put  to  some  use,  the  administration  would 
have  had  some  friends  for  its  plan.  As  it  was,  however,  the 
friends  were  disgruntled  and  the  enemies  had  a  spectacular 
talking  point. 

Instead  of  trying  to  offset  the  loss  of  interest  and  in- 
action by  exemplary  and  economic  use  of  office  buildings 
which  were  bought  with  the  site,  the  Fusion  majority  took  a 
three  year  lease  in  a  private  building  at  $110,000  per  year  for 
the  public  service  commission,  and  after  the  public  had  been 
shown  that  in  the  city's  own  municipal  building  and  office 
buildings  bought  with  the  court  house  site  there  were 
164,000  square  feet  of  floor  space  to  meet  a  need  of  80,000 
square  feet! 

Was  the  Lease  Good  Business? 

Again,  it  is  not  the  abstract  merit  of  the  issue  but  the 
way  in  which  it  was  presented  in  public  news  items  that 
brings  us  civic  lessons: 

1.  The  Real  Estate  Board  insisted  that  room  for  the 
public  service  commission  might  have  been  provided 
in  city  buildings  without  extra  cost. 

2.  One  of  the  public  service  commissioners  said  that 
space  in  the  municipal  building  would  be  satisfactory 
for  housing  that  commission. 

3.  Borough  President  Marks  of  Manhattan  said  at  a 
board  of  estimate  meeting  that  he  would  have  been 
glad  to  move  into  the  nearby  vacant  building  owned 
by  the  city  on  the  court  house  site  had  be  but  known 

•   that  the  public  service  commission  wanted  quarters 
in  the  municipal  building. 

4.  Although  proof  of  available  space  was  submitted  to 
the  mayor  and  the  chamberlain  they  put  off  looking 
at  the  proof  until  too  late. 

32 


Mis-Publicity  Lost  Votes 


Typical  di  the  way  this  budget  item  and  many  other 
items  were  described  to  the  public  is  the  folloAving  quotation 
from  the  Ne.w  York  Evening  Post,  February  1,  1917: 

"If  I  had  known  that  the  public  service  commission  want- 
ed two  entire' floors  in  the  municipal  building,  and  would  be 
satisfied  with  nothing  else,  I  would  have  moved  my  depart- 
ment to  the  Hallenbeck  or  other  empty  buildings,  letting  the 
commission  have  the  two  floors  assigned  to  my  department," 
said  Mr.  Marks.  'That  would  have  saved  the  city  $550,000 
in  five  years." 

"I  am  sorry  we  did  not  know  that  you  would  have  been 
willing  to  give  up  your  suite,"  said  the  mayor,  turning  to 
smile  at  his  ally,  Comptroller  Prendergast,  in  the  game  of 
baiting  borough  presidents. 

Major  Reason  IX 
Fusion  Mis-Publicity 

"He  gave  us  59  milk  stations,"  shouted  advertisements  in 
newspapers  and  other  publicity.  "The  number  of  milk  sta- 
tions has  been  largely  increased,"  said  the  Fusion  platform. 
Fusion's  record  showed  that  its  administration  inherited  56 
milk  stations  and  built  only  three. 

"He  gave  us  22  public  baths,"  other  paid  advertisements 
and  publicity  claimed.  Fusion's  record  showed  that  its  admin- 
istration inherited  21  and  built  only  one  and  that  one  from 
money  appropriated  by  the  preceding  administration  headed 
by  a  Tammany-elected  mayor. 

"Has  added  more  dockage  than  any  other  previous  ad- 
ministration," said  the  Fusion  platform.  Fusion's  records, 
however,  showed  that  instead  of  adding  more  wharfage  than 
previously  it  added  13,200  or  33%  fewer  feet  that  was  added 
during  Mayor  Gaynor's  four  years  and  75%  fewer  feet  than 
during  Mayor  McClellan's  second  term;  it  widened  one  pier 
where  its  predecessor  widened  three  and  McClellan  widened 
four;  it  built  3500  feet  of  bulkhead,  300  fewer  than  under 
Mayor  Gaynor,  and  14,400  feet  fewer  than  under  Mayor 
McClellan's  second  term ;  it  built  eight  fewer  piers  than  did 
McClellan  and  11  fewer  platforms. 

"First  to  take  systematic  interest  in  public  recreation," 
shrieked  paid  advertisements.     Yet  the  preceding  mayor  had 

33 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

appointed  a  commission  of  five  headed  by  the  head  worker  of 
Greenwich  House  which  spent  $12,000  in  1912  and  $19,000 
in  1913. 

In  season  and  out  of  season  Fusion  speakers  and  other 
publicity  claimed  that  Fusion's  appointments  "were  of  men 
who  knew  "no  political  boss  or  lackey,  did  not  throw  out 
officials  who  were  making  good  to  put  in  favorites,  chose 
wherever  he  could  find  the  men  best  qualified  by  reason  of 
training  and  experience  for  the  particular  job  to  be  filled." 
"New  York  is  governed  by  men  who  serve  no  one,  no  party, 
but  that  of  the  city  and  nation."  Yet  all  the  while  the  opposi- 
tion was  publicly  citing  case  after  case  of  political  leaders 
and  their  heelers  named  for  lucrative  public  office. 

The  mayor's  pre-election  pledge  that  he  would  in  no  re- 
spect give  a  partisan  or  factional  administration  as  the  basis 
for  any  political  appointment  or  official  act,  and  his  after 
election  statement  that  he  would  "do  the  work  of  the  whole 
citizenry  of  the  cit^"  and  give  a  business  administration  with- 
out regard  to  politics,  was  ccntrasted  with  the  facts  and  with 
the  mayor's  own  chamberlain's  statement  in  the  National 
Municipal  Review,  January  1916,  that  "appointments  were 
made  deliberately  to  minor  positions  from  the  names  of  polit- 
ical Fusion  or  the  anti-Tammany  organizations." 

How  such  mis-publicity  continues  to  menace  in  1921  is 
shown  by  such  quotations  as  the  fodlowing  from  memorial 
services  February  12,  1921:  "Never  otie  instance  where 
Mitchel's  actions  were  governed  by  any  political  considera- 
tions. .  .Mitchel  knew  no  party  affiliations  in  his  official  duty." 

How  did  such  mis-publicity  lose  votes  for  Fusion?  This 
is  what  happened:  Night  after  night  the  anti-Fusion  candi- 
dates when  meeting  audiences  would  hold  up  a  half  page  or 
a  page  or  quarter  page  advertisement  and  speak  like  this: 
"Here  is  an  advertisement  which  appeared  in  all  the  news- 
papers today.  The  weeklies  all  over  town  will  have  this  same 
advertisement  this  week,  I  don't  know  who  is  paying  for  it 
or  why.  I  know  and  you  know  that  it  costs  money,  real 
money  and  a  lot  of  it,  at  least  a  million  dollars  a  month.  That 
somebody  has  some  strong  reasons  for  spending  this  money 
seems  clear  when  we  compare  the  facts  with  these  claims.  For 
example,  it  says  here  that  the  present  administration  gave  you, 
the  public,  59  infant  milk  stations ;  the  truth  is  this  adminis- 

34 


Endorsing  Mistakes  Lost  Votes 


tration  inherited  56  infant  milk  stations  and  in  four  years 
has  built  only  three.  Again,  it  says  here  that  the  Fusion  ad- 
ministration gave  you  22  public  baths ;  the  truth  is  that  it  in- 
herited 21  and  built  just  one,  but  with  money  voted  in  Mayor 
Gaynor's  term.  Now  yo'u  see  why  the  West  Side  plan,  etc, 
etc,  etc." 

Would  Fusion  have  gained  if  it  had  told  the  truth? 

We  interject  this  question  and  a  partial  answer  here  be- 
cause many  readers  will  perhaps  shrug  their  shoulders  and  say 
that  all's  fair  in  love  and  war  and  politics  except  showing  the 
cost  of  mis-publicity.  Whether  mis-publicity  is  justifiable 
wherever  it  succeeds  is  an  ethical  question.  Right  here  we 
are  less  interested  in  the  morals  than  in  the  effect  of  such 
tactics.  The  win-at-any-cost  tactics  adopted  by  Fusion  pub- 
licity agents  and  campaigners  did  not  work  in  1917. 

It  may  Ue  that  the  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth  could 
not  have  won  the  election  either.  We  believed  then  and  we 
believe  now  that  the  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth  would 
have  tremendously  strengthened  the  vote  getting  power  of 
the  Fusion  program  and  candidates  and  would  have  tremen- 
dously decreased  their  vote  losing  force. 

It  was  not  necessary  for  Fusion  to  claim  perfection.  Mr. 
Adoph  Lewisohn  a  prominent  member  of  the  Fusion  com- 
mittee writing  in  the  Times  August  25,  1917,  said  that  only 
rogues  and  fools  insist  they  cannot  err  and  that  Fusion  had 
been  peither  all  wise  nor  all  perfect.  Could  he  and  the  whole 
committee  have  safely  admitted  to  the  public  wherein  they 
believed  Fusion  had  failed  in  wisdom  and  fallen  short  of  per- 
fection? 

Supposing  that  fusion  leaders  instead  of  claiming  that 
their  mayor  had  given  them  59  milk  stations  had  said  that 
Fusion  members  of  the  last  administration  headed  by  a  Tam- 
many-elected mayor  had  secured  56  milk  stations  to  which 
Fusion  had  added  three;  and  supposing  they  had  said  that 
way  back  before  Mayor  Mitchel  and  President  McAneny  were 
members  of  the  board  of  apportionment,  they  had  helped  get 
reorganization  of  the  city  health  department  and  the  borough 
of  Manhattan  and  had  continued  their  interest  in  milk  sta- 
tions as  members  of  the  board  of  estimate.  Such  publicity- 
would  have  been  telling  the  truth;  would  it  have  been  far 

35 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

more  effective  than  untruth  or  exaggeration? 

Of  14  italicized  reasons  for  re-election  of  Mitchel  on  page 
1  of  the  first  Fusion  Flashlight  we  wrote  at  the  time  to  Fusion 
backers  and  to  newspapers:  "Nine  do  more  harm  than  good 
because  they  either  flatly  misrepresent  or  misrepresent  by 
inference.  The  14  paragraphs  lay  the  mayor  open  to  suc- 
cessful criticism,  where  14  stronger  points  might  have  been 
listed  that  could  not  be  challenged." 

Long  before  the  campaign  it  seemed  to  us  clear  that 
fulsome  eulogy  and  absence  of  criticism  menaced  not  only  the 
Fusion  re-electidn  but  the  cause  of  good  government.  Before 
it  was  too  late  in  1917  we  appealed  to  all  parties  and  factions, 
wrote  the  mayor,  talked  with  his  managers  and  publicity 
agents,  wrote  to  and  met  with  Fusion  committee  members, 
ministers  and  newspaper  editors,  always  appealing  for  distinc- 
tion between  the  things  they  approved  in  the  Fusion  four  years 
and  the  things  they  disapproved.  We  urged  them  to  claim 
credit  for  commendable  actions,  admit  or  charge  blame  for 
uncommendable  actions,  and  specifically  pledge  their  can- 
didates and  Fusion's  backers  to  avoid  a  repetition  of  the  un- 
commendable. 

Perhaps  the  wise  men  who  opposed  any  confessions  of 
error  by  Fusion  were  right.  One  of  them,  Theodore  Roosevelt, 
wrote  us  in  answer  to  an  appeal  to  him,  that  in  politics  it 
would  not  win  elections  to  back  a  man  for  his  good  works 
and  at  the  same  time  confess  mistakes.  Was  he  right?  We 
doubt  it.  AVe  feel  quite  sure  at  any  rate,  however  elections  win 
out,  that  no  great  cause  is  weakened  by  frank  confession  that 
some  of  its  leaders  made  a  mistake  last  year  which  they  or 
their  successors  and  the  promoters  of  the  cause  specifically 
promise  will  not  be  repeated  next  year. 

Fusion  held  votes  by  admitting  error  in  the  Cruger  case. 
Did  it  lose  votes  by  denying  other  equally  clear  errors? 

Major  Reason  X 
Division  Among  Fusion  Officers 

The  nine  major  reasons  thus  far  mentioned  would  have 
lost  many  votes  even  if  Fusion  officers  had  been  united. 

Naturally  wherever  arguments  against  Fusion  proposals 
were  made  bv  Fusion's  own  members  of  the  board  of  estimate 


Division  Among  Fusion  Officers  Lost  Votes 

and  apportionment,  both  the  intensity  and  costUness  of  op- 
position were  increased. 

Repeatedly  Borough  President  Marks  of  Manhattan  and 
Borough   President  Mathewson  of  the  Bronx  delayed  action 
and  argued  for  modification  of  plans  which  the  mayor,  comp-. 
troller  and  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen  were  urging. 

Few  if  any  individuals  or  agencies  in  the  city  did  more 
to  bring  to  light  deficiencies  in  the  West  Side  plan  than  did 
Borough  President  Marks.  In  fact,  his  opposition  was  su 
consistent  and  constant  in  this  matter  and  several  other  serious 
matters,  that  he  was  dropped  from  the  inner  Fusion  circle. 
It  was  he  who  asked  the  spokesmen  for  the  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce and  the  Merchants  Association,  after  they  had  insisted 
that  the  city's  welfare  required  the  immediate  passage  of  the 
West  Side  plan,  if  they  personally  had  read  the  plan  and  thus 
brought  out  the  admission  that  neither  of  them  had  read  it. 
It  was  he  who  tried  to  secure  courteous  treatment  and  a  full 
hearing  of  citizens  who  appeared  before  the  board  of  estimate, 
in  spite  of  the  snubs  which  newspapers  frequently  printed. 
It  was  he,  through  his  commissioner  of  public  works,  who  in- 
sisted upon  a  hearing  for  the  proposal  which  after  being 
publicly  ridiculed  was  adopted,  that  fire  alarm  boxes  be  provid- 
ed without  digging  sixteen  thousand  unnecessary  holes,  erect- 
ing sixteen  thousand  unnecessary  poles  and  maintaining  six- 
teen thousand  unnecessary  lights. 

Borough  President  Mathewson,  too  often  for  listing  here, 
used  his  power  of  analysis  and  his  knowledge  oif  financial 
methods  to  insist  upon  more  complete  reports  and  postpone- 
ment of  action  until  more  facts  could  be  gathered  for  both 
board  members  and  public. 

Had  the  minority  in  Fusion's  board  of  estimate  been  out- 
voted after  earnest  effort  to  secure  agreement  in  the  light  of 
all  obtainable  facts,  this  divided  front  might  not  have  been  so 
costly.  When,  however,  the  public  was  told  repeatedly  that 
the  steam  roller  was  being  used  by  the  majority  against  the 
minority  of  Fusion's  own  officers,  and  that  Fusion  officers  who 
wanted  more  information  or  different  action  were  scorn- 
fully treated  in  public,  many  votes  were  swung  against  Fusion. 
No  one  can  be  sure  how  many  but  certainly  enough  to  rank 
this  cause  as  a  major  cause  for  Fusion's  defeat. 

37 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

Minor   Reason   I 
TTie  Cruger  Case  and  Other  Police  News 

It  may  be  that  the  Cruger  case  and  .other  police  news  were 
a  major  reason  for  Fusion's  defeat.  We  call  them  a  minor 
reason  because,  if  they  had  stood  alone,  the  corrective  steps 
taken  in  July  1917  by  Police  Commissioner  Woods,  plus  the 
general  standing  of  the  department  under  him  in  comparison 
with  its  previous  record,  would  doubtless  have  enabled  the 
administration  as  a  whole  and  even  the  police  department  itself 
to  fully  recover  ground  lost  by  police  in  the  Cruger  case. 

In  1921  "police  scandals"  have  kept  the  first  page  for  many 
more  than  the  allotted  seven  days.  There  is  every  present  in- 
dication that  efifort  will  be  made  during  the  municipal  campaign 
of  1921  to  extol  the  credit  side  of  the  police  ledger  under  Fusion 
and  Mayor  Mitchel  and  to  treat  the  debit  side  as  if  it  never 
existed.  Good  government  has  much  at  stake  here.  Are  the 
conditions  which  are  shocking  the  public  sense  of  decency  and 
safety  in  1921  a  recent  invention,  re-inventioin  or  ''throw  back," 
or  did  they  have  counterparts  even  under  "police  reform  at  its 
best?" 

The  most  serious  of  Fusion's  police  troubles  which  the 
public  of  1921  cannot  safely  forget,  was  this,  quoted  principally 
from  the  New  York  Times.  On  February  14,  1917  a  17  year 
old  high  school  girl,  Ruth  Cruger,  was  reported  missing.  When 
last  seen  she  said  she  was  going  to  call  for  a  pair  of  skates  she 
had  left  to  be  sharpened  in  a  motorcycle  shop  near  her  home. 
The  owner  of  the  shop,  Alfred  Cocchi,  left  home  the  day  the 
girl  disappeared.  During  the  week  after  the  girl's  disappear- 
•ance,  the  cellar  of  the  motorcycle  shop  was  examined  by  de- 
tectives who  reported  nothing  suspicious  and  no  further  in- 
vestigation necessary. 

Thirteen  days  after  Ruth  Cruger  was  reported  missing, 
having  found  no  trace  of  her  or  her  possible  abductor,  the 
police  declared  this  case  to  be  "no  different  from  that  of  the 
1000  or  1500  girls  who  disappear  in  this  city  yearly." 

Four  months  later,  when  the  police  wished  to  search  the 
cellar  of  the  motorcycle  shop,  they  were  stopped  by  the  wife 
of  the  former  owner.  Finally,  a  few  days  later,  due  to  the 
persistent  efforts  of  a  woman  lawyer — the  motorcycle  shop 

38 


Admitting  Police  Blunders  Helped  Fusion 

had  then  been  sold  to  auctioneers  who  gave  permission  for 
the  search — the  cellar  was  dug  up  and  the  body  of  Ruth 
Cruger  was  found  there. 

This  incident  was  not  a  light  hidden  under  a  bushel  but 
a  matter  of  national  news  day  after  day  for  months.  Its  har- 
rowing details  were  given  pages  upon  pages  in  the  papers 
read  by  New  York  voters. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  publicity  about  the  Cruger  case 
several  other  facts  about  police  work  were  given  to  the  public 
in  ways  that  left  an  impression  which  would  have  lasted  until 
election  even  if  campaign  opponents  had  not  reiterated  them: 

1.  In  July  a  policeman  shot  and  killed  a  boy  while  run- 
ning away  from  a  crap  game  in  which  he  had  taken 
no  part, — an  action  regarding  which  the  Society  for 
the  Prevention  of  Municipal  Waste  was  given  space 
in  the  newspapers  to  protest  to  the  police  commission- 
er against  permitting  members  of  the  police  force  to 
use  their  revolvers  in  regulating  the  cotiduct  of  chil- 
dren. (The  small  number  of  members  of  the  com- 
plaining society  is  a  detail  compared  with  the  number 
of  voters  who  read  the  complaint.) 

2.  'V9  silk  burglaries  during  the  first  half  of  1917",  re- 
ported the  Times  July  20,  ''amounting  to  more 
than  $200,000  and  causing  burglary  insurance  com- 
panies to  raise  rates,  curtail  risks  and  in  some  cases 
refuse  to  write  insurance.  ,  .  In  several  cases  the 
district  attorney's  assistants  investigated  these  cases 
and  publicly  reported  gross  negligence  on  the  part 
of  the  police." 

3.  "Silk  House  Robbed  Under  Police  Guard — Detectives 
told  that  burglary  was  to  take  place — Fail  to  prevent 
$10,000  loft  raid,"  was  a  headline  in  the  New  York 
Times  of  July  18,  1917.  The  story  went  on  to  say 
the  silk  dealer  had  notified  the  police  department  of 
a  threatened  burglary  which  he  had,  in  fact,  helped 
arrange  in  order  to  catch  the  burglars;  had  gotten 
additional  notice  to  the  police  through  the  district 
attorney ;  had  been  scored  for  being  fearful :  had  then 
found  that  in  spite  of  advance  notice  the  burglary  had 
taken  place  according  to  schedule. 

4.  "Find  $5000  in  loot  on  elevator  boy.  .  .negro  confesses 

39 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel*s  Defeat 

he  systematically  robbed  apartment  houses...  his 
thefts  total  $25,000,"  is  another  headline  in  the  same 
paper  the  same  day. 

Other  Fusion  papers  that  reported  these  same  incidents 
and  caused  much  laughter  by  their  stor/y  of  the  appointment 
which  the  police  failed  to  keep  with  silk  burglars,  also  gave 
at  length  the  report  of  the  mayor's  commissioner  of  accounts, 
Leonard  Wallstein,  that  the  police  department's  method  of 
supervising  detectives  and  patrolmen  actually  invited  incom- 
petence, neglect  and  graft. 

When,  therefore,  during  the  campaign  the  ''house  organ" 
of  the  police  force  and  other  city  employees  attacked  Fusioli's 
police  work,  and  w^hen  the  Tammany  platform  claimed  that 
"crime  has  alarmingly  increased,  hundreds  of  disappearances 
have  remained  unaccounted  for  and  scores  of  murderers  un- 
detected," the  public's  memory  repictured  striking  cases 
which  newspapers  had  featured,  especially  the   Cruger  case. 

The  opposition's  thunder  was  largely  stolen,  so  far  as  the 
Cruger  case  was  concerned,  by  the  police  commissioner's  ad- 
mission of  colossal  blundering  by  the  detective  bureau.  This 
admission  was  capitalized  for  Fusion  in  the  campaign  book. 
Fusion's  Record.  The  Tammany  platform  never  even  men- 
tioned the  Cruger  case — a  lesson  to  reformers  who  wonder 
whether  to   deny   and   evade   or   to   frankly   admit   mistakes ! 

An  Insider's  Judgment  After  Four  Years 

The  foregoing  statement  in  its  original  form  was  sub- 
mitted to  a  member  of  the  Mitchel  adminstration  who  knew 
the  facts  intimately.     This  is  his  comment  slightly  abridged : 

My  feeling  is  that  on  the  whole  the  record  of  the  police 
department  made  votes  for  Mayor  Mitchel,  that  a  very  great 
majority  of  the  people  of  the  city  were  convinced  that  sub- 
stantial improvement  had  been  made  by  the  police  in  the 
effectiveness  of  their  work,  in  their  honesty,  courtesy,  and 
desire  to"  serve  the  public  in  all  sorts  of  new  ways.  I  be- 
lieve this  feeling  counteracted  reports  that  appeared  in  the 
papers  from  time  to  time  of  individual  failures  to  get  results. 

With  reference  to  the  Cruger  case  the  situation  was  dif- 
ferent. It  was  incredilDly  bad  detective  work  not  to  have 
found  the  body  of  the  murdered  girl. 

40 


An  Insider  on  Police  Merits 


Looking  at  the  matter  simply  from  the  point  of  view 
yon  bring  up,  that  is,  the  effect  upon  the  votes  for  Mitchel, 
I  believe  he  undoubtedly  lost  votes  because  of  this  case, 
how  many  it  would  be  difficult  to  state. 

These  votes  were  lost,  however,  not  because  of  the  stu- 
pidity oi  the  detective  work,  bad  as  it  was,  but  because  of 
the  impression  driven  in  by  the  district  attorney  and  by  some 
newspapers  that  the  police  were  not  merely  stupid  but  act- 
ually partners  in  the  crime,  that  in  some  way  policemen  were 
protecting  the  murderer  in  white  slavery  operations,  and  that 
perhaps  this  lamentable  case  showed  that  in  spite  of  the  ifm- 
provement  that  had  apparently  been  made  in  police  work, 
the  same  old  rotten,  grafting,  despicable  System  was  still 
working,  under  cover  but  powerful. 

The  fact  that  this  impression  was  false  was  finally  made 
clear  to  the  public  by  the  complete  failure  of  the  investiga- 
tions of  the  district  attorney  and  the  commissioner  of  ac- 
counts, with  the  support  of  the  governor,  to  show  up  anything 
approaching  such  a  situation.  This  was  not,  however,  until 
after  the  election,  so  that  when  they  voted  a  number  of 
people  unquestionably  felt  that  there  was  something  very  rot- 
ten in  the  police  department. 

New  York  voters  have  always  been  militant  against 
police  corruption.  If  the  facts  as  to  alleged  corruption  in 
connectioli  with  this  case  which  were  shown  later  had  been 
shown  before  election,  I  believe  that  the  record  of  the  police 
department  would  have  caused  no  one  to  vote  against  the 
administration. 


41 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 


Minor  Reason  II 
Civil  Service  Disappointments 

Part  of  the  fireworks  of  every  political  campaign  is  the 
charge  that  mayor  or  governor  or  president  has  named  favor- 
ites or  incompetents  tO  office.  It  was  to  be  expected  that  any 
mayor  of  New  York  would  be  charged  with  such  misuse  of 
power  for  party  or  faction  or  personal  ends. 

Only  what  friends  admitted  or  charged  is  quoted  here. 

It  is  left  to  the  reader's  imagination  to  picture  what  campaign 
use  opponents  were  making  of  conditions  that  occasioned 
such  comments  by  friends. 

"The  municipal  civil  service  commission  excepted  from 
examination  47  examiners  of  charitable  institutions  and  10 
of  these  persons  appointed  to  these  excepted  positions  were 
not  eligible  because  they  were  engaged  in  private  business," 
wrote  Nelson  S.  Spencer,  president  of  the  City  Club  of  New 
York  and  chairman  of  the  executive  committee  of  the  Civil 
Service  Reform  Association  in  January  1916. 

"The  report  of  the  state  civil  service  commission  based 
its  condemnation  of  [the  Fusion  civil  service  commission]  in 
many  cases  on  a  misstatement  of  fact  or  trivialities,  failed  to 
take  account  of  much  valuable  constructive  wok  on  the  part 
of  the  municipal  commission,  and  recommended  dismissal 
without  adequate  cause ;  but  it  specified  six  matters  in  which 
the  commission  was  justly  open  to  criticism,  one  of  which  was 
the  appointment  of  47  examiners  to  charitable  institutions," 
said  the  executive  committee  of  the  Civil  Service  Reform 
Association  in  its  annual  report  May  7,  1915. 

Among  acts  for  which  Fusion's  municipal  civil  service 
commission  was  open  to  criticism  the  executive  committee  of 
the  local  Civil  Service  Reform  Association  specified  these  in 
its  report  for  1915 : 

42 


Much  Advertised  Civil  Service  Troubles 


1.  "Irregular  conduct  of  examination  for  finger  print  ex- 
pert, which  was  cancelled  during  the  state  investiga- 
tion; 

2.  "Re-rating  of  a  man  who  was  marked  qualified  as  a 
non-competitive  provisional  appointee  for  the  position 
of  secretary  of  the  commission  on  markets  after  he 
had  failed  to  pass  the  examination ; 

3.  "Appointment  of  another  man  as  secretary  to  the  com- 
mittee on  port  and  terminal  facilities,  appointed  as  an 
expert  without  adequate  qualifications ; 

4.  "Assignment  of  hospital  helpers  and  monitors  to  per- 
form, clerical  and  investigative  duties  in  violation  of 
law." 

The  mayor's  own  chamberlain  writing  in  January  1916, 
after  many  months  of  hostile  criticism  erf  Fusion's  alleged 
violations  of  civil  service  and  of  its  pledge  to  give  a  strictly 
non-partisan,  non-political  administration,  wrote  in  the  na- 
tional organ  of  municipal  reform  that  Fusion  had  permitted 
different  pro-Fusion  party  factions  to  name  men  for  minor 
positions.  What  this  backsliding  in  so-called  minor  matters 
meant  was  reiterated  during  the  campaign,  with  the  names  of 
many  avowedly  political  appointees  from  clerks  up  to  judges. 
One  judge  so  appointed,  brother  of  Manhattan's  Republican 
"boss"  is  figuring  again  in  the  discussions  of  1921  as  appointee 
to  a  state  judgeship.  Again  the  reader  is  reminded  of  three 
facts : 

1.  The  issue  here  is  not  the  merit  of  the  Fusion  admin- 
istration but  the  publicity  given  from  1914  through 
the  election  of  1917  to  admitted  acts  which  the  public 
disapproved. 

3.  Kept  pledges  to  further  civil  service  reform  were 
taken  for  granted ;  unkept  pledges  stood  out  like  a  sore 
thumb. 

3.  Publics  do  not  at  election  time  strike  a  careful  bal- 
lance  between  the  liked  and  the  disliked  in  judging 
officers,  but  take  good  things  like  redeemed  pledges 

43 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 


for  granted  and  give  their  special  attention  to  dislikes 
for  the  past  or  to  pledges  for  the  future. 


Minor  Reason  III 

Broken   Home  Rule   Pledges 
and  Charter  Revision 

A  new  charter  was  pledged  in  the  Fusion  platform  of  1913. 
A  new  charter  was  demanded  in  a  statement  by  Fusion's 
mayor  in  February  1916.  As  pre-campaign  discussions  in 
1921  help  us  see,  a  new  charter  was  sorely  needed. 

"Consistent  effort  to  obtain  home  rule  with  special  refer- 
ence to  the  city's  framing  and  adopting  its  own  charter," 
was  Fusion's  statement  in  1916  in  Administrative  Progress  of 
1914-1916  of  what  Fusion  considered  itself  pledged  to  do. 

A  charter  revision  committee  was  appointed  23  days  after 
the  new  administration  took  office,  January  23,  1914.  It 
stopped  work  two  years  later.  During  the  campaign  of  1917 
there  was  neither  a  new  charter  nor  a  report  nor  a  committee. 

The  abolition  of  the  board  of  aldermen  was  specifically 
pledged  before  Fusion's  election  in  1913.  Mayor  Mitchel, 
shortly  after  he  became  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen  in 
1910,  had  won  much  public  acclaim  by  calling  it  a  "vermiform 
appendix."  When  Fusion  elected  its  board  of  estimate  in 
1913  it  also  elected  a  board  of  aldermen  and  president.  From 
that  time  all  talk  about  dropping  the  board  of  aldermen  end- 
ed The  before-election  pledges  simply  disappeared.  Fusion's 
review  in  1916  of  changes  to  be  proposed  did  not  include  the 
abolition  of  the  board  of  aldermen.  Before  the  campaign  of 
1917  the  Woman's  Municipal  League  in  a  bulletin  for  Fusion 
declared :  "The  board  of  aldermen  has  not  only  been  of  the 
greatest  assistance  in  financial  matters  but  has  also  accom- 
plished the  greatest  volume  of  legislative  work  in  years." 

/    .  44 


Unkept  Pledges  of  Legislaton 


For  campaign  purposes  it  was  not  necessary  to  prove 
that  what  Fusion  candidates  and  Fusion  publicity  had  pledged 
before  election  ought  to  have  been  done.  The  point  the  oppo- 
sition made  was  that  the  pledge  had  not  been  kept  and  had 
apparently  been  forgotten  and  repudiated.  It  was  openly 
charged  that  Fusion  changed  its  mind  about  abolishing  the 
board  of  aldermen  after  and  because  that  board  became 
Fusion. 

Minor  Reason  IV 

Broken  Terminal  Market  Pledges 

"The  Fusion  candidates  pledged  themselves  to  undertake 
in  a  serious  way  the  investigation  of  market  conditions  and  the 
institution  of  some  system  whereby  the  producer  and  con- 
sumer can  be  brought  into  closer  relations,"  said  Fusion's  re- 
port on  administrative  progress  from   1914-1916. 

Yet  when  the  1914  legislature  passed  a  bill  to  create  a 
department  of  markets  in  New  York  City  Fusion's  mayor 
vetoed  it  on  the  ground  that  it  was  mandatory.  Not  until 
June  1917  was  a  department  of  public  markets  created. 

During  the  1917  campaign  which  ended  in  Fusion's  de- 
feat food  was  still  being  carried  by  the  railroads  through  the 
Bronx  to  the  lower  end  of  Manhattan  and  trucked  back  again 
to  the  Bronx  with  the  double  result  of  adding  to  the  cost  of 
food  and  of  increasing  congestion  both  of  Manhattan's  road 
terminals  and  her  streets.  And  all  during  this  campaign  food 
was  being  brought  from  Long  Island  to  the  Wallabout  Market 
in  Brooklyn  by  the  round-about  way  of  carrying  it  by  train 
from  Long  Island  to  Manhattan  and  then  trucking  it  back 
to  Brooklyn. 

In  the  West  Side  plans  which  the  public  expected  to 
settle  the  important  problems  of  improving  Manhattan's 
west  side  waterfront  there  was  no  provision  for  terminal 
markets.  In  fact,  the  testimony  of  the  New  York  Central's 
own  freight  agent  showed  that  the  future  handling  of  terminal 
markets  would  be  hindered  by  those  plans. 

45 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel*s  Defeat 


Under  such  circumstances  with  rapidly  rising  prices  the 
attacks  upon  Fusion  started  with  more  than  an  even  chance 
against  a  Fusion  platform  statement  like  "Fusion  believes 
in  the  establishment  of  great  public  .wholesale  terminal  mar- 
kets" in  the  middle  of  a  paragraph  beginning  with  parks  and 
ending  with  dependent  children. 

"To  complete  the  South  Brooklyn  teminal,"  was  one  of 
Fusion's  pre-election  pledges.  In  pro-Fusion  papers,  as  well 
as  in  others,  readers  were  told  three  days  before  election  "In 
the  time  that  elapsed  between  1913  and  1917  Fusion  treated 
the  Brooklyn  Marginal  Railway  as  a  real  estate  problem  and 
not  as  a  port  problem..." 

When  the  public  voted  in  1917  the  main  fact  stared  it  in 
the  face  that  there  was  noi  South  Brooklyn  terminal  railway; 
that  friends  of  the  administration  made  over  a  million  dol- 
lars on  options  taken  ten  days  before  the  city  decided  to  pur- 
chase certain  real  estate  and  purchased  by  the  city  at  100% 
profit — which  profit  was  cited  by  the  State  Federation  of 
Labor  among  "real  reasons  why  organized  labor  does  not 
want  Mitchel ;"  that  these  friends  were  indicted  right  at  the 
height  of  pre-election  excitement  for  conspiracy  to  defraud 
the  city  in  several  land  deals. 

Minor  Reason  V 
The  Garbage  Invasion  of  Staten  Island 

So  far  as  Richmond  County  or  Staten  Island  was  con- 
cerned the  foisting  upon  it  of  a  garbage  disposal  plant  was 
a  major  issue. 

Fusion's  credit  would  have  sufifered  enough  if  the  trans- 
fer of  garbage  disposal  from  Barren  Island  to  Staten  Island 
had  originated  with  Fusion's  own  leaders.  The  real  origina- 
tors, however,  were  indicted  just  before  election  for  con- 
spiracy to  defraud  the  city  in  real  estate  deals.  They  declared 
at  a  legislative  hearing  that  they  "had  seen  to  it"  that  the 
garbage  contract  specifically  excluded  Barren  Island  from 
the  places  where  a  garbage  plant  might  be  built.  In  their 
own  words  "We  own  great  properties  in  the  Jamaica   Bay 

46 


Unkept  Terminal  Market  Pledges 

section.     The  Barren  Island  garbage  impairs  our  property." 

Staten  Island's  distress  and  fury  won  no  concessions 
from  the  city  officials.  Instead  it  won  such  treatment  in 
open  session  that  bitterness,  threats  and  actual  frontier 
methods  of  illegal  resistance  to  law  were  resorted  to,  and 
published  and  re-published.  Fusion's  board  of  estimate  held 
an  unannounced  session  to  authorize  the  proposition,  which 
session  was  later  advertised  in  pro-Fusion  papers  as  well  as 
others  and  without  any  Fusion  apology,  as  a  "snap  session"  to 
forestall  a  public  hearing  on  Staten  Island's  protests. 

That  want  of  room  did  not  make  it  necessary  to  leave 
Barren  Island  was  shown  by  engineers'  drawings  and  evi- 
dence from  city  departments.  The  Evening  Post  readers, 
for  example,  May  12,  1916  saw  these  headlines:  ''Barren 
Island  Urged  iohr  Garbage  Disposal  Plant — Board  of  Estimate 
is  Reminded  of  Fact  that  City  Owns  Eighty  Acres  of  Barren 
Island,  Including  Water-Front  on  a  Navigable  Channel." 

Were  Staten  Islanders  justified  in  taking  so  seriously  a 
"modern  sanitary  garbage  plant?"  That  question  is  not  our 
problem  here.  The  fact  is  that  this  garbage  invasion  of  Staten 
Island  helped  cause  Fusion's  defeat. 

Minor  Reason  VI 
"No  Little  Tactlessness'* 

*'No  little  tactlessness"  was  the  second  of  ten  reasons 
given  ten  days  before  election  by  the  editor  of  the  Evening 
Post  why  there  was  only  a  fighting  chance  for  Mayor  Mitchel 
to  suceed  himself. 

Ex-president  Roosevelt's  version  of  how  Fusion  started 
out  with  no  little  tactlessness  was  this:  "The  weakness  of 
Fusion  is  that  it  utterly  failed  to  keep  in  touch  with  the 
people.  It  was  putting  too  many  people  into  office  that  they 
did  not  know  and  some  that  they  did  not  like.  It  was  not 
enough  to  give  the  peoiple  a  good  impression.  Fusion  must 
not  give  the  impression  that  it  was  aloof." 

"Too  much  Fifth  Avenue,  too  little  First  Avenue,"  was 
another  diagnosis  by  Mr.  Roosevelt.     By  this  he  was  thought 

47 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

to  mean  rides  about  the  country  in  the  special  car  of  this  or 
that  raih"oad  magnate  seeking  city  concessions ;  widely  ad- 
vertised week-end  visits  to  this  or  that  multi-millionaire ; 
selection  of  "Wall  Street"  and  other  representatives  of  so- 
called  "interests"  for  committees  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
people  who  felt  that  they  had  elected  him,  etc,  etc. 

It  is  hard  for  persons  who  knew  Fusion  leaders  and 
backers  sokrially,  and  read  about  them  in  national  magazines, 
to  appreciate  that  the  official  representatives  of  this  same 
group  of  prominent  and  cultured  supporters  actually  did  by 
their  tactlessness  create  a  vital  minor  issue. 

"Shall  friends  of  honest  and  efficient  government,"  wrote 
the  Institute  for  Public  Service,  August  1,  1916  of  official 
conduct  at  the  board  of  estimate  meeting,  Thursday,  July  27, 
"who  see  these  conditions  and  know  how  fires  of  resentment, 
indictment  and  worry  are  fed  by  official  mistreatment  of 
citizens  when  doing  their  best  for  the  city,  express  their 
friendship  by  continuing  silence  or  by  speaking  up  in  meet- 
ing?" We  ofifered  $25  for  the  "best  cartoon  or  best  idea  for 
a  cartoon  that  will  help  elected  officers  throughout  the  country 
see  that  voters  are  entitled  to  the  same  courtesy  after  election 
as  they  are  shown  before  election." 

A  dialogue  at  that  same  hearing  will  help  reproduce  the 
atmosphere.  The  room  was  crowded  with  citizens  requesting 
time  to  secure  and  study  the  city's  proposed  arrangement  with 
the  New  York  Central  Railroad : 

Petitioner-lawyer:  W^e  appeal  to  you  as  the  public's  ser- 
vants and  trustees . . . 

Comptroller  Prendergast :  Trustees!  Mr.  H!  But  not 
servants ! 

President  Marks:  I  concede  the  "servant." 

Comptroller:  Everyone  for  his  own  calling! 

A  stock  exchange  member  said:  "Unless  I  had  seen  it 
with  my  own  eyes  I  could  not  have  believed  it  possible  that 
New  York  citizens  would  endure  such  treatment." 

A  distinguished  lawyer  said:  "I  want  no  legal  business 
which  would  require  my  enduring  such  discourtesy." 

48 


Treatment  of  Citizens  Lost  Votes 


A  school  teacher  wrote:  "The  attitude  of  the  mayor  and 
the  comptroller  toward  the  petitioners  was  one  of  ridicule, 
amusement,  insolence,  intolerance,  condescension  and  thinly 
veiled  contempt.  At  every  opportunity  the  tactics  of  laugh- 
ing down  the  citizens  was  employed,  and  twice,  at  a  plea  for 
time  to  consider  the  plan,  the  mayor  threw  his  head  back 
on  his  chair  as  if  wearied  beyond  endurance  by  importunity." 

An  engineer  wrote:  "The  comptroller  ate  candy  and  re- 
sorted to  cuteness  and  cleverness  in  accent,  motions  and 
speech;  the  mayor  cast  slurs  at  speakers  that  convulsed  the 
room  with  laughter,  and  listened  to  what  was  being  spoken  to 
him  only  when  he  felt  like  it.  The  president  of  the  board 
of  aldermen  spoke  only  when  there  was  some  ridiculous 
point  to  emphasize.  The  president  of  Queens  laughed  in  the 
face  of  the  Queens  resident  who  was  talking  to  him.  No 
citizen  was  safe  against  insults,  belittling  distortion  of  his 
words  into  jokes,  or  conversation  by  officials  during  his  re- 
marks."    (The  two  presidents  were  Tammanyites.) 

The  Evening  Post  said:  "Members  of  the  board  were  in- 
clined to  be  jocular  and  scoffed. . ." 

The  American  said:  "Comptroller  Prendergast  grinned 
and  cracked  jokes  at  the  expense  of  the  speakers." 

The  Evening  Sun,  by  the  way,  gave  an  interesting  twist 
to  our  ofifer  by  asking  if  the  purpose  of  our  proposed  contest 
could  not  be  served  quite  as  well  if  members  of  the  Institute's 
staff  would  stand  out  on  City  Hall  steps  and  make  faces.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  the  Institute  for  Public  Service  had  no  per- 
sonal grievance  whatever.  Its  agents  were  always  treated  at 
public  hearings  and  in  the  offices  of  mayor  and  comptroller 
with  complete  courtesy.  They  were  never  "hazed"  not  even 
during  the  three  hours  when  they  appeared  with  facts  about 
the  West  Side  plan. 

Minor  Reason  VII 

"Real  Reason  Why  Organized  Labor 

Did  Not  Want  Fusion  Re-Elected'* 

The  above  caption  was  the  title  of  an  indictment  which 
the  New  York  State  Federation  of  Labor  sent  out  to  trade 


49 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

unions  during  the  campaign  by  mail,  by  press  items,  by  pub- 
lic address  and  private  conversation. 

''Real  reasons"  included   these: 

1.  Fusion  advocacy  of  the  great  grab  by  the  New  York 
Central  of  the  western  water-front  of  the  city. 

2.  Fusion  officials'  open  submission  to  the  domination 
of  the  Rockefeller  interests  in  their  attempts  to  con- 
trol the  charities  of  the  city. 

3.  Failure  of  Fusion  to  carry  out  campaign  pledges  to 
bring  about  an  era  of  economy. 

4.  Failure  of  Fusion  to  relieve  the  great  burden  of  taxa- 
tion imposed  upon  real  estate  in  the  city  and  indirect- 
ly upon  every  wage  earner. 

5.  Failure  of  Fusion  to  reduce  the  high  cost  of  living  by 
prosecuting  the  milk,  fuel  and  food  pirates. 

6.  The  attempt  of  Fusion  to  make  it  appear  that  the  city 
expenses  had  been  reduced  whereas  there  was  an 
actual  increase. 

The  pamphlet's  introduction  was:  "This  will  probably  be 
one  of  the  most  spectacular  municipal  campaigns  in  the  city's 
history,  one  in  which  we  must  not  allow  the  issues  and  many 
grievances  of  the  wage-earners  against  the  administration  of 
Mayor  Mitchel  and  Comptroller  Prendergast  to  be  lost  sight 
of  by  unfair  attacks  upon  our  patriotism  and  loyalty." 

Fusion's  work  on  unemployment  and  on  conditions  of 
dock  employment  was  turned  against  its  candidates  in  spite 
of  all  the  advertising  of  interest  in  the  laborer  during  the  hard 
times  of  1914-1915. 

So  completely  did  the  great  labor  program  fizzle  that 
when  the  mayor's  committee  on  unemployment  and  its  sub- 
committees made  their  reports  almost  no  mention  was  made 
of  them  and  the  committee  failed  to  retain  a  working  co- 
operation with  labor.  Although  Fusion  in  1914  and  1915  had 
set  forth  the  great  importance  to  the  commerce  of  New  York 

50 


Labor  Opposition — Out  of  Town  Support 

and  the  country  of  correcting  longshoremen's  labor  conditions, 
the  Fusion  platform  left  it  to  the  anti-Fusion  platform  to 
pledge  correction  of  labor  conditions  in  the  port.  It  never 
mentioned  Fusion's  employment  bureau  or  unemployment 
studies. 

Thus,  right  up  to  the  election  itself  the  mayor's  own 
committee's  report  on  longshoremen  employment  was  quoted 
to  describe  current  conditions:  "Longshoremen  have  to  wait 
hours  on  the  streets  and  piers  in  90  above  or  10  below  zero, 
in  order  to  be  on  hand  when  hiring  starts  due  to  the  un- 
fcertainty  as  to  the  arrival  of  ships  and  the  amcmnt  of  cargo 
they  carry.  A  longshoremen  may  have  to  go  from  pier  to 
pier  collecting  the  different  earnings  from  different  employers 
for  whom  he  has  worked  during  the  week.  As  there  was 
only  one  rest  room  in  all  of  Manhattan  longshoremen  had  to 
use  the  saloons  as  shelters  while  waiting  between  jobs." 

Minor  Reason  VIII 

Misguided  Out  of  Town  Support 

In  Texas  the  election  betting  in  1917  was  11  to  1  for 
Fusion.  In  Boston  it  was  4  tot  1.  The  odds  for  Fusion  in 
out-of-town  editorials  and  newspapers,  including  statements 
in  national  magazines  with  nation-wide  audiences,  were  more 
overwhelming  than  the  betting  odds, — were  in  fact  almost 
unanimous.  Perhaps  because  they  did  not  carry  anti-Fusion 
news  as  did  pro-Fusion  home  papers. 

This  almost  unanimous  out-of-town  support  provoked  the 
Tammany  leader  to  a  witticism  that  he  did  not  care  how  large 
a  majority  out-of-town  non-voters  would  give  to  Fusion. 

''A  really  national  campaign"  to  re-elect  Mayor  Mitchel 
was  urged  by  the  Boston  Transcript  which  declared  that  "the 
interest  of  the  nation  in  his  re-election  is  at  this  moment  as 
great  as  that  of  the  city  of  New  York." 

"The  cause  of  non-partisan  good  government  is  at  stake 
in  America's  greatest  city,"  said  the  Galveston  News. 

"Practically  every  important  newspaper  in  the  country 
regardless  of  party  lines.  .  .demanded  the  retention  of  what 

51 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

they  considered  the  best  administration  in  the  city's  history 
and  the  re-election  of  a  mayor  whom  they  held  up  as  a  con- 
spicuously patriotic  and  zealous  war  time  official,"  was  the 
Literary  Digest's  picture  of  the  out-of-town  attitude.      *' 

How  generally  the  out-of-town  vision  was  beclouded  be- 
cause of  the  preparedness  issue,  which  many  of  Fusion's  in- 
town  supporters  insisted  in  advance  would  prove  a  boomer- 
ang, it  is  hard  to  tel<l. 

During  the  campaign  we  wrote  to  one  out-of-town  editor 
after  another  begging  them  not  to  tell  their  people  that  the 
main  issue  in  New  York  was  loyalty  or  disloyalty,  pro- 
America  or  pro-Germany,  because  it  was  clear  even  before  the 
loyalty  issue  was  raised  that  nothing  short  of  a  miracle  of 
wisdom  and  truth-telling  on  the  part  of  Fusion  managers 
could  save  the  city  for  Fusion's  candidates. 

How  could  misguided  out-of-town  support  help  defeat 
Fusion?  Because  it  lent  color  to  charges  that  "interests," 
"big  money,"  and  "class  consciousness"  were  trying  to  confuse 
New  York  voters. 

Minor  Reason  IX 

"Fuses"  to  Major  Reasons 

Such  a  public  attitude  was  created  by  major  reasons  for 
Fusion's  defeat  that  innumerable  facts  of  relatively  minor 
weight  when  taken  by  themselves  seemed  of  huge  impor- 
ance  when  used  as  fuses  to  set  fire  to  major  reasons.  For 
example : 

1.  Rotten  fot>d  cases  where  packing  houses  paid  fines  of 
$25  or  had  sentences  suspended  by  Fusion's  appointed 
judges,  including  the  mayor's  own  former  partner. 

2.  Failure  to  complete  the  accounting  reforms  which 
were  pledged. 

3.  Brutality,  perjury  and  pilfering  at  the  city's  farm  re- 
formatory reported  by  the  mayor's  commissioner  of 
accounts. 

4.  Two  girls  at  the  hospital  for  feeble  minded  who  had 

52 


Divers  Minor  Reasons — Platforms 

become    pregnant    after    being    in    the    department's 
charge  six  and  three  years. 

5.  A  superintendent  put  in  charge  of  over  2000  defec- 
tives, among  w^hom  the  use  of  drugs  was  a  persisting 
evil,  but  a  few  months  after  he  had  been  discharged 
from  state  prison  for  having  illegally  sold  drugs. 

6.  A  widely  advertised  Americanization  program  for  all 
foreign  born  or  born  of  foreign  parentage  in  a  city 
whose  leaders  in  art,  literature,  education,  banking  and 
business  included  many  persons  in  these  two  cate- 
gories. 

7.  Systematic  salary  splitting  in  the  health  department. 

8.  A  widely  published  proposal  to-  permit  alcohol  and 
dancing  in  city  parks,  etc. 

Decidedly  minor  the  reader  will  probably  say  of  these 
items.  Minor  is  what  Fusion  backers  called  them  in  1917. 
Perhaps  they  would  have  been  negligible  if  they  had  been 
frankly  admitted.  Being  denied  or  palliated  or  evaded,  like 
scores  of  a  similar  kind,  they  furnished  kindling  wood  for  big 
fires  of  opposition. 

Minor  Reason  X 

Pro-Fusion  and  Anti-Fusion  Platforms 

That  Fusion  reform  was  at  a  disadvantage  in  discussing 
a  number  of  specific  issues  raised  by  the  opposition,  has  al- 
ready been  made  clear.  It  was  on  the  defensive.  Had  the 
Fusion  platfornii  frankly  recognized  the  issues  which  the 
public  was  discussing,  which  the  opposition  platforms  dis- 
cussed clearly  and  sensationally — like  ''realty  favors,"  "bend- 
ing knee  to  Rockefeller  money  in  schools,"  "private  chanty 
trust  to  dominate  our  public  charities" — we  believed  then  and 
we  believe  now  that  Fusion  would  have  greatly  weakened 
the  opposition. 

Such  heroic  treatment,  of  course,  called  for  belief  in  the 
proposition  that  it  is  better,  even  as  a  matter  of  vote  getting, 
for  a  cause  to  admit  mistakes  and  promise  to  correct  and  avoid 
others  like  them  than  to  deny  or  evade  mistakes. 

53 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

If  our  purpose  here  were  not  solely  to  explain  the  op- 
position vote,  it  would  be  profitable  to  point  out  several  strik- 
ing weaknesses  in  the  Democratic  platform  upon  which  a 
party  that  admitted  its  own  mistakes  might  have  conducted 
an  attacking  campaign;  e.  g.,  these  Democratic  pledges: 

1.  To  break  up  the  health  department  into  five  separate 
departments  ; 

2.  To  banish  the  Gary  system  as  un-American,  undemo- 
cratic, and  an  insidious  distinction  between  rich  and 
poor. 

Minor  Reason  XI 

Fusion's  Managers  and  Most  Advertised  Backers 

"Almost  unanimous  support  of  financial  interests  is  as- 
siduously used  against  him/'  was  the  seventh  of  Editor  Vil- 
lad's  ten  reasons  why  Fusion  ten  days  before  election  had 
only  a  fighting  chance. 

Three  weeks  before  election  the  New  Republic,  also 
strongly  pro-Fusion,  said  that  for  a  year  past  irresponsible 
agitation  against  the  Rockefeller  Foundation  had  been  carried 
oin  throughout  the  city  and  that  the  animus  of  the  anti-Gary 
plan  was  now  revealed,  namely,  "as  a  careful  cultivation  of 
popular  prejudices  against  the  one  point  where  the  Mitchel 
administration  could  be  made  to  seem  vulnerable.''  Fusion 
candidates  were  "unfortunately  confined  in  their  ideas  and 
sympathies  by  fatal  class  limitations,"  was  the  New  Republic 
after  election  diagnosis. 

"The  claim  of  Fusion's  being  the  tool  of  the  interests," 
said  the  Woman's  Municipal  League,  actively  pro-Fusion, 
"could  not  have  persisted  had  the  city  administrators  not 
been  confined  in  their  ideas  and  sympathies  by  fatal  class 
limitations  and  lack  of  popular  understanding  and  needs. 
There  was  too  much  benevolent  autocracy  about  the  method 
by  which  reforms  were  instituted." 

"Perfectly  outrageous"  in  its  use  of  money  and  autocratic 
was  the  management  of  Fusion's  campaign,  according  to  one 

54 


Votes  Lost  by  Platform  Evasions  and  Managers 

of  its  committee  members,  Joseph  M.  Price,  who'  was  Fusion's 
successful  manager  in  1913.  Speaking  five  days  after  election 
Mr.  Price  said :  "Fusion  managers  absolutely  failed  to  under- 
stand the  popular  mind  of  the  town,  with  the  most  deplorable 
result. .  .The  Fusion  Committee  rented  offices  that  would  have 
been  fit  for  an  advertising  agency.  Unfortunately  political 
campaigns  cannot  be  conducted  like  a  selling  campaign  for 
soap.  A  ticket  cannot  be  advertised  into  office  through  paid 
columns  of  the  newspapers." 

"Too  much  Fifth  Avenue,  too  little  First  Avenue,"  was 
ex-President  Roosevelt's  way  of  putting  it. 

Where  closest  friends  could  speak  this  way  publicly  it 
is  not  hard  to  imagine  how  political  opponents  were  talking 
and  how  thousands  of  honest  believers  in  reform  were  feeling; 

Moneybund  and  Plunderbund  were  features  of  opposing 
cartoon,  editorial  and  mass  meeting.  Here  readers  must  not 
forget  that  in  the  newspaper  line-up  it  was  only  in  numbers 
that  newspapers  stood  5  to  1  for  Fusion.  The  circulation  of 
the  few  papers  that  came  out  bitterly  against  Fusion  was 
two  thirds  the  circulation  of  the  seventeen  papers  for  Fusion 
so  that  whether  right  or  wrong  their  featuring  of  Moneybund 
and  Plunderbund  created  an  issue  in  no  oine  knows  how  many 
thousand  minds. 

The  widely  published  letter  of  the  New  York  State  Fed- 
eration of  Labor  which  called  upon  labor  to  defeat  Fusion 
candidates  called  them  "cowards  and  traitors  who  will  betray 
the  interests  and  future  welfare  of  our  people  to  [certain 
Fusioin  backers]  and  similar  exploiters  of  the  people."  Other 
charges  in  this  same  letter  included  "Fusion  officials'  open 
submission  to  the  domination  of  the  Rockefeller  interests  in 
their  attempt  to  control  the  charities  of  the  city." 

"The  Money  Power  Behind  Fusion"  was  the  title  of  a 
four-page  pamphlet  widely  distributed  during  the  campaign. 
This  dealt  with  38  of  the  Fusion  committee  of  250.  "These 
men  and  their  satellites,"  began  the  folder,  "control  the  com- 
mittee of  350  which  seeks  to  fasten  money  government  on  the 
people  of  New  York  City."  That  this  folder  came  from  the 
private  pen  of  a  newspaper  reporter  and  investigator  rather 

55 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

than  from  a  citizen's  committee  or  a  political  party  does  not 
change  the  effect  of  its  specific  allegations  upon  voters  who 
read  it  or  newspaper  extracts  from  it. 

Of  Fusion's  chairman  appeared  the  statement  that  he  was 
director  of  a  bank  with  $600,000,000  deposits,  an  exploiter  of 
labor,  indicted,  charged  with  conspiracy,  profiteer  out  of  the 
sale  of  war  munitions,  director  in  thirty  corporations 
and  banks  whose  combined  assets  exceed  two  billion. 

Of  the  executive  committee's  chairman  were  expres- 
sions like  these :  controlled  by  Standard  Oil-Rockefeller  in- 
terests ;  director  in  corporations  which  with  subsidiaries  and 
affiliated  cdncerns  have  drawn  several  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year  out  of  the  city  treasury,  largely  because  specifica- 
tions were  drawn  to  admit  only  their  product  of  paving 
material;  makes  trust  products. 

Other  Fusion  committee  members  were  featured  as  con- 
nected with  the  New  York  Central  Railroad  whose  interests 
were  involved  in  the  West  Side  plan,  personal  counsel  to 
Rockefeller,  attorneys  for  big  concerns  having  financial  re- 
lations with  the  city,  real  estate  experts,  milk  trust  directors, 
etc,  etc. 

The  Woman's  Committee  of  100  for  Non-Partisan  Gov- 
ernment started  alphabetically  as  follows  : 

1.  wife  of  a  commissioner  also  a  Fusion  candidate: 

2.  officer  of  a  national  civic  agency ; 

3.  an   employee   of   the   Fusion   committee; 

4.  wife  of  a  iCity  College  professor; 

5.  wife  of  a  subway  financier; 

6.  officer  and  representative  of  a  Rockefeller  foundation ; 

7.  wife  of  the  Fusion  city  chamberlain  recently  resigned ; 

8.  sister  of  the  Fusion  chamberlain  recently  resigned; 

9.  sister-in-law    of    the    city    chamberlain    recently    re- 
signed. 

In  fact,  nearly  half  of  this  woman's  committee  were  paid 
or  unpaid  appointees  of  the   mayor,  wives  of  appointees  or 

56 


Published  Criticisms  of  Fusion  Backers 

officers,  or  wives  of  railroad  or  foundation  officers,  or  other- 
wise known  chiefly  for  connection  with  person,  business 
agency  or  institution  that  was  riot  considered  a  free  agent  in 
this  campaign. 

The  delegation  whose  names  were  printed  in  the  news- 
paper as  having  come  to  the  mayor  in  the  name  of  non-partisan 
womanhood  to  ask  him  to  run  consisted  of  the  wife,  sister  and 
sister-in-law  and  two  former  employees  of  the  mayor's  city 
chamberlain  and  principal  advisor,  one  of  them  being  chair- 
man of  the  woman's  committee  and  the  other  recently  made 
president  of  the  Woman's  Municipal  League. 

No  question  whatever  is  here  raised  as  to  the  hundred 
percent  devotion  and  capacity  of  any  member  of  any  com- 
mittee. Historical  records  are  being  quoted  to  explain  how 
Fusion  backers  lent  themselves  to  political  opposition  in  1917. 

"Rockefellerism"  ran  through  all  this  hostile  publicity  as 
an  irritating  fugue.  The  State  Federation  of  Labor  used  it. 
The  winning  candidate  and  the  anti-Fusion  papers  were  con- 
stantly using  it.  In  the  "pedigree"  pamphlet  of  Fusion  cam- 
paign committees 

1.  Rockefeller  appeared  twice  in  the  first  three  lines 
about  Fusion  committee's  chairman ;  four  times  about 
the  second  name ;  in  the  headline  as  the  name  of  eight 
other  of  38;  twice  against  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
and  once  against  11  others  or  22  in  all. 

2.  The  commissioner  of  corrections,  active  in  the 
woman's  committee,  was  taken  from  a  Rockefeller 
agency. 

3.  Two  other  Rockefeller  Foundation  employees  acting 
as  the  mayor's  special  representatives  succeeded  in  re- 
organizing the  board  of  education. 

4.  Rockefeller  contributions  were  published  as  a  large 
percentage  of  the  amounts  used  by  civic  agencies 
that  were  aggressively  backing  the  West  Side  plan, 
the  Gary  plan  and  Fusion  candidates. 

5.  When  the  Fusion  board  of  estimate  voted  for  the 
board  of  education  an  executive  manager  which  the 

57 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

latter  had  not  requested  it  was  a  Rockefeller  repre- 
sentative in  the  board  of  education  who  jumped  to 
the  defense. 

6.  In  1914  at  the  request  of  two  Rockefeller  board  mem- 
bers and  officers,  the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research 
which  for  eight  years  had  impartially  and  unremit- 
tingly published  and  studied  impersonal  facts  about 
official  acts  and  city  needs  no  matter  who  was  elected^ 
discontinued  its  non-partisanship  and  abandoned  its 
outside  criticism.  By  1916  and  in  a  national  con- 
vention it  had  declared  the  policy  of  witholding 
criticism  of  friends  in  office  and  had  officially  en- 
dorsed the  West  Side  plan  which  its  then  director 
helped  to  draw. 

7.  In  1915  one  Rockefeller  employee,  after  failing  to 
secure  a  favorable  vote  in  the  board  of  education  for 
a  small  school  board,  indignantly  announced  that  if 
the  boiard  would  not  vote  it  the  board  of  estimate 
committee  on  charter  revision  would  introduce  a  bill 
at  Albany.  The  next  day  the  fiscal  board  announced 
that  this  matter  had  not  come  up  before  it  and  they 
knew  nothing  of  it.  The  next  day  however  a  bill 
was  sent  to  Albany  to  establish  the  threatened  small 
board,  a  fact  which  the  opposition  did  not  fail  to  state 
and  re-state. 

8.  Before  his  appointment  to  the  school  board  the  more 
active  Rockefeller  agent,  while  a  representative  of 
the  Carnegie  Foundation,  circulated  petitions  against 
the  re-appointment  of  the  president  of  the 
board  of  education  who  had  been  unanimously  re- 
elected the  year  before.  That  petition  was  headed  by 
the  executive  officers  of  several  different  foundations 
and  foundation  beneficiaries.  When  this  agent  re- 
signed he  stated  publicly  that  he  had  only  gone 
on  the  board  to  change  the  presidency  and  the 
organization, — the  point  of  this  reminder  being  that 
those  facts  were  published  in  1917  and  played  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  pre-election  discussions. 

58 


The  Chief  Reason  for  Fusion's  Defeat 

9.  Finally,  from  1916  through  1917,  as  stated  in  the 
chapter  on  school  politics,  the  General  Education 
Board  was  publicly  charged  with  holding  back  infor- 
mation which  it  had  gathered  about  the  Gary  plan  in 
Gary  in  order  not  to  embarrass  the  Fusion  political 
campaign. 

Do€s  It  Hurt  Reform  Causes  to  Have  Rich  Backers? 

So  far  as  the  civic  lessons  from  Fusion's  defeat  are  con- 
cerned, one  might  safely  concede  that  the  oipposition  on  per- 
sonal grounds  was  100%  ill  founded.  There  still  would 
remain  the  fact  that  Fusion's  own  spokesmen,  both  before  and 
after  election,  admitted  and  declared  that  the  way  in  which 
personal  connections  and  backing  had  been  publicly  discussed 
lost  Fusion  votes. 


Major  Reason  XI  and  Qiief  Reason 
Cessation  of  Co-Operative  Criticism 

After  his  election  in.  1913,  Mayor-elect  Mitchel  wrote  a 
letter,  to  be  used  in  raising  funds  for  citizen  research  and  pub- 
licity, in  which  he  said  that  he  could  not  look  forward  hopefully 
to  a  successful  four  years  as  mayor  unless  assured  in  advance 
of  frank,  ■  outspoken,  specific  criticism  by  the  public  he  aimed 
to  serve. 

Never  before  had  any  city  elected  a  mayor  who  had  ob- 
served and  utilized  the  outside  private  citizen  co-operation 
of  fact-seeking,  fact-telling  agencies  for  so  long  or  in  as  many 
ways  as  had  the  Fusion  mayor-elect  df  New  York  in  1913. 
Pitiless  publicity  of  demonstrable  facts  had  been  the  basis 
of  his  reputation.  From  1906  when  detailed  by  the  corpora- 
tion counsel  as  special  investigator  for  Mayor  McClellan  to 
study    the   borough   of    Manhattan — thro>ugh    his    official    in- 

59 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

quiries  as  president  of  the  board  of  aldermen,  his  re-organiza- 
tion studies  as  federal  port  collector,  his  campaign  speeches, 
and  even  his  first  days  as  mayor — he  continuously,  progres- 
sively and  openly  used  the  outside  cooperation  of  citizen  in- 
vestigators who  were  working  for  better  government,  no 
matter  who  was  elected. 

Yet  instead  of  obtaining  the  help  he  was  so  unusually 
equipped  to  use,  it  is  doubtful  if  any  mayor  of  any  American 
city  has  ever  been  more  completely  insulated  from  outside 
criticism,  which  means  more  completely  denied  the  help  of  the 
public  he  represented.  The  striking  contrast  already  shown 
between  friends'  pre-election  praises  of  the  Fusion  adminis- 
tration and  the  same  friends'  post-election  diagnoses  of  its 
defeat  is  symptomatic  of  the  four-year  gap  between  what  civic 
agencies  were  privately  saying  to  one  aAother  about  the  ad- 
ministration and  what  they  were  saying  about  it  publicly. 

Ex-president  Roosevelt  has  already  been  quoted  as  saying 
after  election  that  Fusion  made  its  first  mistake  in  picking 
appointees  whom  the  people  did  not  know  or  did  not  like,  and 
made  the  continuing  mistake  of  "too  much  Fifth  Avenue  and 
too  little  First  Avenue."  Pro-Fusion  newspapers,  pro-Fusion 
officers,  pro-Fusion  Women's  Municipal  League  and  others 
have  been  quoted  as  having  said  after  election  when  too 
late,  what  could  hardly  have  failed  to  help  had  it  been  said  in 
the  early  days  and  years  of  the  administration. 

Instead  of  the  ''forces  of  righteousness"  serving  notice  in 
December  1913  and  January  1914  that  they  would  not  follow 
a  non-partisan  administration  in  a  factional  or  partisan  dis- 
tribution of  patronage,  the  policy  of  hush  and  whisper  and 
applause  was  almost  universally  adopted  by  them. 

One  reason  for  this  conspiracy  of  silent  criticism  and 
public  applause  cannot  be  too  baldly  stated  or  too  vividly 
remembered,  namely,  almost  every  agency  of  outside  criti- 
cism "had  its  feet  in  the  trooigh," — to  use  a  conventionalized 
term  for  sharing  in  political  patronage. 

The  thoroughness  with  which  civic  agencies  lost  their 
outside  perspective  and  impersonal  relation  to  government — 
and  consequently  their  ability  to  help  it  when  it  most  needed 

60 


The  Chief  Reason  for  Fusion's  Defeat 


their  help — was  put  as  follows  by  a  pro-Fusion  writer  in  the 
World's  Work: 

"Under  Mayor  Mitchel's  administration  these  agencies — 
private  civic  agencies  and  municipal  leagues — have  ceased  to 
be  mere  critics — ^they  have  directly  taken  charge  of  public 
affairs.  Hitherto  Tammany  politicians  or  politicians  nearly 
as  practical  have  managed  this  city  with  the  uplifters  sta- 
tioned outside  constantly  turning  the  finger  of  scorn.  Now 
the  uplifters  themselves  are  holding  down  nearly  all  the  good 
jobs  with  the  hungry  Tammany-ites  peering  through  the  win- 
dow from  without.  Mayor  Mitchel's  administration  is  a  gov- 
ernment by  the  uplifters." 

What  agencies  had  this  writer  in  mind? 

1.  The  47  civil  service  appointees  which  included  10 
which  the  Civil  Service  Reform  League  later  called 
illegal,  and  which  were  the  subject  of  a  state  investi- 
gation and  hostile  criticism  for  weeks  and  of  hostile 
echoes  for  years,  came  from  the  Charity  Organization 
Society  and  the  School  of  Philanthropy  and  included 
one  of  the  most  widely  known  leaders  in  social  work. 

2.  The  fire  prevention  chief  whose  work  was  the  subject 
of  so  much  resentment  and  bitter  hostility  came  from 
the  directorship  of  the  Citizens'  Union. 

3.  The  secretary  of  the  organization  committee  during 
the  campaign  was  the  secretary  of  the  City  Club. 

4.  The  chairman  of  the  civil  service  commission  whose 
work  provoked  state  investigation  and  much  local 
protest  and  criticism  was  a  prominent  East  Side  civic 
worker. 

5.  The  charities  commissioner  who  directed  the  wire- 
tapping in  the  charities  controversies  and  also  raised 
the  money  for  the  pamphlet  which  contained  the  un- 
true statement  about  pigs  and  orphans  eating  from 
the  same  bowl — and  which  was  printed  and  issued 
after  the  falsity  of  the  statement  was  known — ^was 
general  agent  of  the  Association  for  Improving  the 

61 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

Condition  of  the  Poor. 

6.  The  corrections  commissioner  was  from  the  Rocke- 
feller Bureau  of  Social  Hygiene. 

7.  The  corporation  counsel  was  treasurer  of  the  Bureau 
of  Municipal  Research,  as  was  also  the  chief  advisor 
and  efficiency  engineer  for  the  first  two  and  a  half 
years  of  the  administration. 

8.  The  executive  of  the  civil  service  commission  was 
from  the  Civil  Service  Reform  League. 

9.  ^nrj  iio^  ithiMtaai^laQttf^i^nafiUrer  uno  taliui  I.P31  llie 
TMiieidiint  ef  the  t\onl  Ilielatc.  Boordi 

10.  The  executive  of  the  child  welfare  board  was  from  the 
Association  for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor. 

11.  One  of  the  mayor's  aids  was  executive  of  the  Honest 
Ballot  Association. 

Other  "entangling  alliances"  might  be  cited  that  were 
cemented  by  the  payroll  in  the  early  days  of  the  administra- 
tion before  any  serious  controversies  had  arisen.  Not  only  in 
the  critical  days  when  policies  were  being  shaped  and  first 
mistakes  being  made,  but  also  in  the  critical  days  of  the  cam- 
paign for  re-election,  these  entangling  alliances  raised  a  bar- 
rier between  civic  agencies  and  the  public  and  between  civic 
agencies  and  the  Fusion  government,  which  had  the  double 
effect 

of  paralyzing  desire  and  capacity  for  independent  criti- 
cism of  the  part  of  civic  agencies,  and 

of  taking  away  from  city  officers  the  stitch  in  time  that 
saves  nine,  namely,  the  unprejudiced  and  informed  advice 
and  protest  in  time  which  they  needed  from  non-political 
friends  of  good  government. 

How  completely  the  critical  faculty  had  atrophied  under 
Fusion  was  shown  at  the  time  of  the  primary  frauds.  The 
reader  remembers  that  nearly  one  hundred  election  officers 
served  terms  in  the  penitentiary  for  the  attempt  to  steal  the 
Republican  primary  for  the  Fusion  candidate.  Although  the 
Honest  Ballot  Association  had  for  four  years  been  vociferous 
in  its  appeal  for  an  honest  ballot,  it  was  as  silent  and  as  in- 
effective as  a  mouse  in  hiding  after  the  greatest  election  fraud 

62 


Civic  Agencies  Represented  On  Payroll 

which  has  ever  been  proved  in  New  York  City.  The  Anti-Vice 
Committee  of  Fourteen  presented  before  election  a  solid 
front  of  applause  for  reform  police  managing,  but  after  election 
its  annual  report  foi^  the  period  that  the  public  was  discussing 
just  before  election  showed  that  it  had  been  in  possession  of 
knowledge  which  proved  Fusion's  failure  to  correct  flagrant 
evils. 

Evidence  came,  (in  the  very  first  week  of  the  Fusion  ad- 
ministration) that  outside  civic  criticism  would  be  needed  even 
by  a  Fusion  administration  incomparably  equipped  to  redeem 
pledges.  After  promises  which  had  been  heralded  and  be- 
lieved throughout  the  nation  of  an  eye  single  to  the  public 
welfare,  the  Fusion  board  at  its  first  meeting  voted  an  emer- 
gency appointment.  The  post  was  for  the  reform  adminis- 
tration's central  efficiency  division.  It  was  not  maintained 
that  the  emergency  employee  was  qualified  to  be  chief  effic- 
iency examiner.  As  a  newspaper  reporter  he  had  been  es- 
pecially interested  in  the  Irish  drama.  When  the  Bureau  of 
Municipal  Research  published  the  facts  about  this  appoint- 
ment as  it  had  been  in  the  habit  of  reporting  such  appoint- 
ments for  eight  years,  it  suggested  that  only  by  such  outspok- 
en, friendly  truth  telling  could  those  who  wanted  efficient 
government  do  their  part  in  helping  elected  officers  get  it. 

Was  this  publicity  welcomed  by  the  Fusion  officers? 
Three  different  members  of  the  new  administration  protested. 
The  mayor  did  not.  When  the  comptroller  told  the  present 
director  of  the  Institute  for  Public  Service  that  "if  the  Bureau 
of  Municipal  Research  is  going  to  make  that  kind  of  publicity 
about  little  things,  I'll  not  cooperate  with  it,"  he  was  answered  : 
"We  shall  continue  to  make  that  kind  of  publicity  whenever 
occasion  arises  and,  Mr.  Comptroller,  when  it  ceases  to  be 
necessary  to  criticize  such  little  things  there  will  be  little 
reason  for  criticizing  the  big  things."  By  a  curious  turn  of 
fate's  wheel,  the  efficiency  examiner  for  whom  public  pledges 
were  waived,  later  became  the  chief  critic  of  vote-losing  real 
estate  deals. 

The  assertion  that  the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research 
would  continue  the  policy  which  it  had  followed  since   1906 

63 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

proved  incorrect.  This  agency  which  in  the  campaigns  of  1909 
and  1913  had  issued  many  bulletins  headed  "No  matter  who's 
elected" — and  which  had  from  1906  through  1913,  as  no  one 
knew  and  admired  more  than  the  mayor  himself,  insisted  upon 
getting  for  the  public  the  whole  truth  no  matter  who  was  in 
office — had  so  changed  by  1916  that  at  a  national  convention 
of  governmental  research  bureaus  and  municipal  reformers, 
its  director  said :  ''When  its  friends  are  in  power,  a  citizen 
research  agency  should  not  publish  unfavorable  information." 

So  repugnant  was  this  position  to  the  whole  spirit  of 
ndn-partisan  citizen  attention  to  government  that  a  formal 
protest,  signed  by  civic  cooperators  from  Dayton,  Akron,  De- 
troit, Minneapolis,  Toronto,  Milwaukee,  etc,  was  issued  to  the 
public  in  order  that  these  out  of  New  York  citizen  agencies 
should  not  be  charged  with  the  destructive  philosophy  that 
hy  this  time  obsessed  New  York  civic  agencies.  The  resolu- 
tion read:  "That  citizen  agencies  for  public  efficiency  cannot 
consistently  make  the  publicatioin  of  facts  contingent  upon 
relationship  with  public  officials  or  upon  expediency." 

The  beginning  of  the  end  of  municipal  research  cooperation 
with  the  Fusion  administration  was  when  the  Rockefeller 
Foundation,  through  Mr.  John  D.  Rockefeller  Jr.  and  Mr. 
Starr  J.  Murphy,  requested  that  in  return  for  a  money  gift 
the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research  should  discontinue  its 
bulletin  publicity,  discontinue  its  out  of  town  surveying,  and 
divorce  its  field  training  school  for  public  service.  From  that 
time  in  April  1914  to  the  end  of  the  Fusion  administration, 
that  agency  might  as  well  have  been  on  Betelgeuse,  150  light- 
years  away,  so  far  as  concerned  helping  the  public  help  the 
Fusion  administration.  Its  post  card  publicity  stopped ;  its 
bulletin  and  news  release  publicity  let  the  old  cat  die.  It 
issued  no  more  statements  to  the  public  entitled  "No  matter 
who's  elected."  Instead,  no  matter  how  serious  the  mistake 
which  Fusion  proposed  or  made,  this  agency  that  had  spent 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars — to  and  for  which  the  Fusion 
mayor  had  written  that  he  could  not  hope  for  success  without 
outside  criticism,  and  with  which  he  had  worked  continuously 
since  1906 — first  stepped  helping  the  public  and  later  stopped 
helping  city  officials. 

64 


Outside  Publicity  Chloroformed 


When  the  Fusion  administration  published  proposed 
leases  of  places  in  the  city  parks  with  permits  for  dancing  and 
sale  of  liquor,  this  agency  was  silent.  When  the  civil  service 
law  was  violated,  when  citizens  were  treated  discourteously 
at  public  hearings,  when  serious  mistakes  were  made  in  real 
estate  deals,  through  all  the  other  mistakes  which  Fusion 
chroniclers  listed  after  election,  this  agency  was  silent.  Yet 
it  had  started  this  four  year  term  with  an  enviable  recdrd  and 
a  nation-wide  reputation  for  truth  seeking  and  truth  telling, 
and  it  had  a  large  staff  of  trained  investigators,  a  score  of 
men  in  field  training  for  public  service  plus  incalculably  val- 
uable knowledge  of  city  departments. 

When  the  West  Side  plan  came  before  the  public,  this 
ageacy  had  as  director  a  former  city  engineer  who  had  helped 
draw  the  plan  and  who  of  course  answered  inquiries  by  saying 
that  the  plan  was  in  the  city's  interest. 

When  crises  arose  under  two  Tammany  mayors  and  one 
Tammany-Democratic  comptroller  this  agency  while  much 
weaker  in  numbers,  in  experience,  in  knowledge  and  in  pres- 
tige than  it  was  in  1914,  nevertheless  secured  official  coopera- 
tion by  publicity  or  by  imminence  of  publicity.  Yet  it  made 
itself  helpless  with  a  reform  administration  to  prevent  similar 
evils  and  secure  similar  benefits. 

Because  it  has  been  so  many  years  since  continuing  in- 
dependent citizen  research  has  made  itself  felt  in  New  York, 
one  or  twd  instances  are  recalled  to  help  explain  why  the 
cessation  of  cooperative  criticism  is  called  the  chief  cause  of 
Fusion  defeat: 

1.  When  the  plans  for  a  new  accounting  system  were 
almost  adopted  by  the  city,  a  story  appeared  in  a 
financial  paper  listing  several  absurdities  in  this  plan 
which  had  been  worked  out  by  several  civic  agencies 
and  iComptroller  Metz.  An  officer  of  the  Bureau  of 
Municipal  Research  called  up  the  editor  of  this  paper 
and  gave  proof  that  the  story  was  seriously  incorrect. 
The  editor  expressed  surprise  and  said  that  one  of  his 

65 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

very  best  reporters  had  gotten  that  story  the  day  be- 
fore from  an  officer  high  in  the  department  of  finance. 
This  officer  was  called  up  and  the  story's  contents 
summarized  for  him.  He  was  amazed  when  told  what 
it  contained  and  asked  what  could  be  done  about  it. 
It  was  suggested  that  the  most  effective  answer 
would  be  one  by  himself;  he  asked  for  a  draft  to  be 
submitted  to  him,  and  the  next  day  the  same  paper 
ran  his  emphatic  and  specific  denial,  over  his  own  sig- 
nature, of  the  statements  which  he  had  given  privately 
the  day  before. 

2.  x\fter  the  first  meeting  of  the  Fusioii  board  of  esti- 
mate and  Tammany-elected  Mayor  in  1910,  news- 
papers gave  great  headlines  and  much  space  to  the  new 
business  tike  type  of  meeting.  Instead  of  the  newly 
elected  officers  appearing  dazed  and  flippant  "they 
acted  like  the  board  of  directors  of  a  great  business." 
They  passed  a  half  dozen  resolutions  one  of  which  re- 
scinded twenty  five  million  dollars  of  corporate  stock 
issued  for  permanent  improvements  but  already  found 
to  be  unnecessary.  One  fact  the  newspapers  did  not 
report,  namely,  that  these  newly  elected  officers  had 
met  several  times  between  election  and  this  first  board 
of  estimate  meeting — had  listened  to  facts  which  a 
civic  agency  had  spent  years  in  gathering ;  had  agreed 
upon  policy  making  resolutions;  but  had  been  so 
busy  that  even  the  actual  typing  of  the  resolutions 
was  done  by  the  civic  agency. 

3.  When  in  1910  Fusion's  borough  president,  George 
McAneny,  was  being  criticized  by  newspapers  for 
holes  in  Manhattan's  streets,  the  Bureau  of  Muni- 
cipal Research,  of  which  he  had  been  a  trustee  before 
elected  to  office,  had  not  yet  adopted  its  policy  of 
silence  or  applause.  On  the  contrary  it  studied  the 
street  situation  to  the  point  of  actually  finding  out 
that  city  engineers  were  instructing  private  contrac- 
tors to  repair  larger  areas  than  the  disrepair  called 
for  and  were  allowing  payment  for  still  larger  areas. 

66 


Types  of  Citizen  Cooperation  Under  Fusion 

Many  other  grave  defects  were  printed  in  detail. 
But  this  truth  telHng  pointed  the  way  to  changes 
of  method  and  result  so  that  bad  streets  were  not 
cited  when  President  McAneny  came  up  for  election 
to  the  board  of  aldermen. 

4.  In  the  face  of  opposition  from  many  sources,  some 
apparent  and  some  under  cover,  the  Bureau  of  Muni- 
cipal Research  by  spending  $8,000  had  shown  the 
need  for  changes  in  water  collection,  which  resulted  in 
an  increase  in  water  revenues  of  $2,500,000  a  year. 
The  report  on  water  revenue  collection  was  printed 
twice,  once  in  the  present  tense  and  once  in  the  past 
tense.  When  the  report  in  the  present  tense,  e.  g. 
'*75%  of  water  meters  are  not  registering"  was 
shown  to  the  water  commissioner,  he  first  protested 
and  then  asked:  "How  long  will  you  give  me  to  put 
this  in  the  past  tense?"  He  made  the  changes  neces- 
sary, the  statement  was  put  in  the  past  tense,  e.  g. 
'75%  of  water  meters  used  to  fail  to  register,"  and 
the  commissioner  was  given  pages  by  newspapers  to 
tell  how  he  had  increased  water  collections. 

5.  AVhen  attempt  was  made  to  force  the  so-called  Gaynor 
charter  upon  the  city  in  1910,  the  Bureau  of  Municipal 
Research  issued  statement  after  statement  showing 
dangers  to  the  city,  misstatements  in  arguments  for 
the  charter  and  safe-guards  that  were  needed.  It 
interested  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  in  calling  a  mid- 
summer meeting  to  be  addressed  by  Lyman  Abbott, 
Seth  Low  and  others  against  the  charter. 

6.  After  Mayor  Gaynor  had  publicly  criticised  the 
Bureau  of  Municipal  Research,  he  accepted  and  called 
for  cooperation  at  several  critical  points  because  it 
helped  him.  Just  because  it  was  free  from  entangling 
alliances  it  could  help.  As  he  once  said  to  the  present 
director  of  the  Institute  for  Public  Service  when  with 
the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research :  "Your  Bureau  has 
helped  save  other  weak  city  officers.  Won't  you  help 
me  save  Blank?" 

67 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

7.  Tammany  Hall's  head  once  said  to  an  officer  in  the 
department  of  finance :  ''What  do  you  mean  by  co- 
operating with  the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research?" 
The  answer  was  used  for  years  by  the  Bureau  for 
Municipal  Research  in  raising  money  for  research 
work  in  New  York  and  other  cities,  namely:  "Well, 
chief,  it's  just  like  this.  Those  people  have  a  right 
to  the  fact.  They  know  a  fact  from  a  guess  when 
they  see  it.  They  apparently  have  money  enough  to 
keep  them  alive  until  they  get  the  facts.  If  I  ob- 
struct them  and  they  find  something,  they'll  think  I 
was  in  it.  If  I  give  them  the  glad  hand  and  they  find 
something,  they  may  think  I  wasn't  in  it." 

Isn't  it  extreme  to  say  that  had  one  agency  continued 
through  the  reform  administration  the  method  of  independent 
investigation  and  publicity  which  with  nation-wide  acclaim 
it  had  employed  through  three  Tammany  Hall  administra- 
tions. Fusion  would  have  made  fewer  mistakes?  It  is  not  ex- 
treme to  say  that  fact  based  outspoken  criticism  in  time  would 
have  prevented  other  mistakes  as  it  prevented  the  adoption 
of  the  West  Side  plan. 

It  is  not  because  of  the  personnel  of  the  Bureau  of  Muni- 
cipal Research  that  this  sweeping  statement  is  made.  It  is 
because  of  the  method  for  which  it  had  earlier  stood,  namely, 
the  method  of  wanting  the  whole  truth,  of  going  after  it,  getting 
it,  trying  to  use  it  constructively,  and  giving  the  public  the 
facts, — after  officials  had  used  them  if  possible,  but  if  neces- 
sary in  spite  of  official  dislike  for  them! 

Had  the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research  or  any  other 
agency  done  with  Fusion  officers  what  that  agency  did  with 
Mayor  McClellan  and  Comptroller  Metz  and  with  Mayor 
Gaynor  and  Comptroller  Metz,  other  agencies  could  not  easily 
enough  have  failed  to  use  a  similar  method  of  impartial 
search  for  and  impartial  publication  of  facts.  The  charmed 
circle  of  applause  and  silence  would  have  broken. 


68 


Fusion's  Platform  of  1917 


EXHIBIT  I 

FUSION'S   PLATFORM 

A  Promise,  Backed  by  Achievements,  That  Will  Be  Fulfilled 
The  Supreme  Issue 

The  municipal  election  of  1917  occurs  during  a  national  crisis 
to  which  all  other  concerns,  public  and  private,  are  necessarily  subor- 
dinate. 

Our  country  is  at  war  with  Germany.  Every  conception  of 
justice  and  liberty  for  which  our  forefathers  fought,  and  which  brought 
our  foreign  born  citizens  to  our  shores,  is  at  issue  in  the  struggle. 

Our  country  must  win.  Organized  municipalities  must  do  their 
part.  They  can  do  so  only  under  governments  of  the  highest  capa- 
city, greatest  strength  and  energy,  and  fearless  outspoken  loyalty. 

They  must  not  be  controlled  or  influenced  by  enemy  sympathiz- 
ers, or  by  discontented  elements  nor  must  they  be  administered  by 
the  untried,  the  incompetent  or  by  those  whose  hesitation  and  evasion 
leave  doubt  of  complete  devotion  to  the  cause  for  which  the  great 
body  of  our  citizens,  native  and  foreign  born,  are  making  supreme 
sacrifices.  To  maintain  order  within,  to  co-operate  with  the  Federal 
Government  against  the  menace  from  without,  to  detect  intrigue,  to 
suppress  violence,  to  hold  together  the  social  and  economic  services 
of  its  citizens,  the  government  of  the  great  City  of  New  York  must  be 
strong,  capable,  alert  and  above  all  intensely  loyal  and  intensely 
American. 

The  city  government  under  Mayor  Mitchel  and  the  Fusion  ad- 
ministration now  measures  up  to  this  high  standard.  "It  is  not  best," 
said  Lincoln,  "to  swap  horses  while  crossing  the  river." 

The  patriotic  record  of  the  present  Fusion  administration  is 
without  parallel  in  the  contemporaneous  municipal  history  of  the 
country. 

We  refer  to  the  incisive  leadership  of  Mayor  Mitchel  in  the 
field  of  national  preparedness,  to  his  action  in  organizing  the  con- 
vention of  American  cities  at  St.  Louis  in  1916  to  crystalize  sentiment 
in  favor  of  universal  training  and  a  strong  navy;  his  organization  of 
the  Mayor's  Defense  Committee  and  its  long  record  of  national  service, 
including  an  aggressive  campaign  of  recruiting  for  the  Army  and 
Navy:  to  his  appointment  of  the  Food  Supply  Committee  to  fight 
exhorbitant  war  prices  for  the  necessities  of  life;  to  his  co-operation 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

with  Commissioner  Hoover;  to  his  appointment  of  the  Public  Works 
Mobilization  Board;  to  his  organization  of  the  Home  Defense  League; 
and  to  the  exceptionally  capable  work  of  the  regular  police  in  main- 
taining order,  protecting  persons  and  property,  and  preventing  a 
disturbance  of  the  processes  of  national  and  local  government  through- 
out a  period  of  great  crisis  and  unparalled  stress.  At  the  direction  of 
the  Mayor  piers  have  been  placed  at  the  disposition  of  the  Army  and 
Navy  for  the  period  of  the  war,  and  suitable  sites  in  public  parks  have 
been  furnished  to  the  Navy  Department  for  the  establishment  of  bar- 
racks, training  and  aviation  stations.  Throughout  the  entire  city  and 
borough  governments  every  agency  has  been  employed,  every  step  has 
been  taken  to  enable  the  city  to  meet  and  solve  our  internal  problems 
occasioned  by  the  war  and  to  put  the  full  force  of  the  officers  and 
citizens  of  New  York  at  the  disposal  of  the  National  Government. 

This  record  is  proof  that  with  the  re-election  of  Mayor  Mitchel 
every  agency  in  the  City  will  be  turned  to  the  service  of  the  nation 
throughout  the  war,  that  traitors  and  traitorous  agitations  cannot 
thrive  within  the  City's  boundaries,  that  by  example,  precept  and, 
when  necessary,  by  force,  New  York  shall  be  kept  tranquil  loyal  and 
secure. 

committal  or  the  hesitant.  Great  as  our  purely  municipal  problems 
are,  we  declare  the  supreme  issue  to  be  the  unqualified  support  of  our 
country  in  its  time  of  need. 

Not  only  is  this  a  war  for  demooraey  as  we  know  it,  but  a  call 
and  an  opportunity  for  more  rapid  progress  toward  the  democracy  that 
ought  to  be.  In  the  soldiers  and  sailors  insurance  bill,  actively  sup- 
ported by  Mayor  Mitchel  and  other  Fusion  officials,  the  national  ad- 
ministration has  recognized  the  problem  of  the  family  behind  the 
change  of  the  tried  and  experienced  for  the  untried  and  the  non- 
soldier.     Much  remains  to  be  done  by  local  authority. 

We  call  upon  all  true  Americans  to  continue  Mayor  Mitchel  and 
the  Fusion  administration  in  power  because  of  loyalty  to  our  common 
country   in   her  new   struggle   for   freedom.     We   protest  against  any 

Fusion  proposes  to  bend  every  resource  toward  helping  its 
citizens  through  their  personal  difficulties  caused  by  the  war.  It  is 
essential  that  the  young  shall  be  neither  starved  nor  stunted,  neither 
less  well  fed  nor  less  well  educated  than  in  time  of  peace.  Extra 
attention  will  be  paid  to  child  welfare  work.  Fusion  will  bend  every 
effort  toward  insuring  reasonable  prices.  Inspection  of  labor  con- 
ditions will  be  increased  in  order  that  unscrupulous  war-time  con- 
tractors shall  not  make  their  profits  by  exploiting  labor  in  the  name  of 
patriotism. 

Fusion  plainly  sees  the  high  duty  and  privilege  of  protecting 
the  social  and  economic  life  of  our  people  from  every  avoidable  harm 
and  danger.  In  using  every  expedient  to  this  end  it  will  not  concern 
itself  with  fear  of  radical  measures.  To  the  fullest  extent  of  the 
public  and  private  resources  of  the  City,  Fusion  will  do  everything 

70 


Fusion's  Platform  of  1917 


to  see  that  the  people  of  this  city  in  their  personal,  their  family^  and 
their  community  lives  emerge  stronger,  better  and  more  united  both 
socially  and  economically.  This  is  Fusion's  conception  of  the  City's 
duty  in  the  international  struggle  not  only  to  conserve  but  also  to 
advance  democracy. 

We  declare  that  the  present  Fusion  administration  is  entitled 
to  re-election  upon  its  administrative  ability  and  record  of  accomplish- 
ment in  municipal  service,  as  well  as  upon  its  record  of  patriotism 
and  loyalty  to  the  national  cause. 

The  Public  Schools 

The  aim  of  Fusion  has  been  to  democratize  the  public  schools. 
Fusion  has  sought  to  bring  to  the  children  of  all  the  people  the  same 
facilities,  advantages  and  opportunities  that  heretofore  have  been  enjoy- 
ed exclusively  by  the  children  of  the  rich  in  the  expensive  private 
school. 

The  Fusion  administration  found  the  schools  in  an  unsound  con- 
dition. An  educational  plant  which  since  consolidation  had  cost 
$156,000,000  was  being  operated  in  such  a  manner  as  to  utilize  but  sixty- 
five  per  cent,  of  its  capacity.  The  part-time  evil  was  increasing.  The 
schools  were  over-crowded.  Classes  were  too  large  for  maximum  effic- 
iency in  teaching.  Annual  appropriations  for  increasing  the  plant  had 
been  liberal  but  with  the  low  percentage  of  utilization,  the  increased 
demand  for  accomodations  outran  the  appropriations  and  the  new  facili- 
ties. Moreover,  the  facilities  available  even  to  full-time  pupils  were 
in  many  respects  deficient  when  compared  with  advantages  offered 
by  private  institutions  to  the  few  who  can  afford  to  pay.  A  fundamental 
American  principle  is  equality  of  opportunities,  especially  the  oppor- 
tunities of  youth. 

The  problem  faced  by  the  Mitchel  administration  was  to  solve 
these  difficulties.  Through  intelligent  study  and  the  adaptation  of  our 
conditions  of  modern  and  progressive  methods,  a  solution  was  found. 
The  new  system  adopted  and  now  in  operation  in  thirty  schools  has  in 
these  schools  solved  the  part-time  evil,  increased  the  utilization  of  the 
educational  plant  to  100  per  cent,  capacity,  provided  better  facilities  and 
an  enriched  course  of  study  for  the  pupils  and  at  the  same  time  made 
important  provisions  for  the  annual  increase  of  school  population.  These 
results  are  clearly  forecast  for  the  entire  school  system  of  the  City. 

Before  reorganization,  the  thirty  schools  had  82,430  pupils  on 
register,  but  47,452  of  these  were  on  part-time  or  double  session.  The 
classes  were  overcrowded.  By  the  new  system,  part-time  and  double 
session  have  been  completely  abolished  in  these  schools,  and  the  number 
of  pupils  in  classes  has  been  reduced  from  an  average  of  43.48  to  an 
average  of  40.5.  Moreover,  the  capacity  of  these  schools  has  been  in- 
creased by  the  new  system  so  that  many  new  pupils  can  be  accommo- 
dated in  them  without  additional  buildings  or  facilities  as  the  growth 

71 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

of  school  population  demands.  The  total  coot  of  this  reorganization  in 
the  thirty  schools  has  been  but  $750,000.  Under  the  old  system,  to  make 
such  a  provision  for  the  present  and  future  would  have  cost  several 
million  dollars,  and  the  facilities  and  educational  advantages  would 
have  been  less. 

In  the  new  type  of  schools,  children  spend  half  the  day  doing 
academic  work  in  regular  class  rooms  and  half  in  shops,  auditoriums, 
playgrounds,  gymnasiums,  music  and  drawing  rooms,  libraries  and 
science  laboratories.  While  one-half  the  pupils  are  in  class  rooms  doing 
academic  work,  the  other  half  are  engaged  in  other  activities  in  other 
parts  of  the  building.  They  change  places  in  the  middle  of  the  fore- 
noon and  afternoon,  so  that  every  child  enjoys  all  the  advantages 
furnished  by  the  school  and  every  part  of  the  school  plant  is  kept  in 
continuous  operation.  Enrichment  of  curriculum  and  economy  in 
expenditures  are  thus  effected  simultaneously.  By  lengthening  the 
school  day  from  five  to  six  hours,  as  much  time  for  academic  work  is 
provided  as  under  the  old  plan,  and  time  which  would  otherwise  be 
spent  under  the  evil  influences  of  the  street  is  devoted  to  supervised 
play  and  other  special  activities  in  wholesome  surroundings  under 
competent  instructors. 

To  date  the  Board  of  Estimate  and  Apportionment  has  appro- 
priated $12,400,000,  for  the  reorganization  of  137  elementary  schools 
on  the  work,  study  and  play  plan.  $9,000,000  of  this  amount  will 
provide  for  fourteen  new  buildings  and  additions  to  eighteen  old  ones. 
$1,400,000  will  provide  additional  playgrounds  and  gardens  for  existing 
buildings.  The  remaining  $2,000,000  will  be  spent  for  modernizing 
123  existing  school  buildings.  When  the  reorganization  was  started 
three  years  ago  there  were  117,000  children  on  part-time  and  double 
session.  When  the  funds  already  appropriated  are  expended,  100,000 
children  will  have  been  taken  off  part-time  and  double  session  and 
given  full  and  complete  school  accomodations.  An  additional  appropri- 
ation of  approximately  $5,000,000  will  be  required  to  take  care  of  the 
remaining  17,000  children  and  complete  the  elimination  of  part-time 
instrudtion. 

The  changes  required  have  not  been  unattended  with  difficulty. 
Administrative  details  have  been  by  no  means  perfect.  Errors  have 
developed  which  are  being  corrected.  Public  confidence  in  innovations 
is  naturally  of  slow  growth,  and  the  new  plans  have  met  full  public 
approval  only  where  best  administered  and  most  thoroughly  developed, 
and  conseqently  most  fully  understood.  Yet  public  confidence  in  school 
matters,  intimately  related  as  they  are  to  the  home  life  of  families,  is 
essential  to  the  success  of  any  educational  system. 

With  these  considerations  in  mind  and  with  constant  effort  to 
improve  details  of  administration,  the  work  will  go  on. 

We  urge  all  citizens  to  inform  themselves  in  respect  to  this 
great  matter,  to  reject  characterizations  of  the  system  which,  on  ex- 
amination, are  found  to  result  from  misinformation  or  misrepresenta- 
tion  industriously  soread  and   capitalized   by  Tammany   for  political 

72 


Fusion's  Platform  of  1917 


purposes,  and  to  continue  the  Fusion  administration  in  authority,  in 
order  that  better  educational  facilities,  with  equality  of  opportunity 
for  all  our  youth,  shall  thus  be  afforded. 

Public    Service    Corporations 

The  Fusion  administi-ation  has  pursued  a  vigorous  policy  with 
respect  to  Public  Service  Corporations.  For  the  first  time  in  the 
city's  history  the  city  government  has  represented  the  people  before 
the  public  service  commission  in  all  important  cases  involving  rates 
or  service.  Important  reductions  of  lighting  rates  have  been  secured, 
better  service  insisted  upon  and  proposed  rate  increases  resisted.  This 
work  will  be  maintained  and  extended. 

Businesslike  Administration 
The  Fusion  administration  has  redeemed  its  pledges  to  give  an 
economical  and  businesslike  administration.  The  budget  for  1917  for 
all  of  the  administrative  departments  under  Mayor  Mitohel  was  a 
million  and  one-half  less  than  in  1914  for  these  same  departments.  On 
a  decreasing  cost  the  great  administrative  departments  have  done  more 
and  better  work.  No  city  administration  since  consolidation  has  shown 
any  similar  capacity.  For  increased  expenditures  due  to  widows' 
pensions  and  education  and  appropriations  for  private  charitable  in- 
stitutions, the  Fusion  administration  accepts  full  responsibility. 

Pay-As- You-Go  Policy 

The  Fusion  administration,  through  the  adoption  of  the  "pay- 
as-you-go"  plan  has,  for  the  first  time  in  the  city's  history,  put  a  check 
to  the  ever  growing  city  debt.  Under  this  policy  debt  for  non-pro- 
ductive improvements  will  be  gradually  wiped  out  and  a  substantial 
fund  for  the  improvements  of  the  future  will  be  gradually  created. 
For  the  first  time  in  its  history  the  city  is  financially  upon  a  sound 
basis. 

Charities 

The  Department  of  Public  Charities  has  been  rebuilt.  The  re- 
organization of  Randall's  Island,  where  the  city  cares  for  its  mentally 
defective  children,  is  a  great  constructive  humanitarian  work.  Con- 
ditions in  private  charitable  institutions  have  been  greatly  bettered 
with  their  co-operation  and  the  hospitals  of  the  department  have  been 
modernized  and  extended. 

Social    Service 

Pensions  have  been  granted  to  widows  with  dependent  children. 
The  number  of  milk  stations  has  been  largely  increased.  The  medical 
examination  of  school  children  has  been  extended.  The  work  of 
the  bureau  of  child  hygiene  has  reduced  the  death  rate  of  babies  under 
one  year  from  102  per  thousand  to  95  per  thousand.  Streets  have  been 
roped  off  for  children's  play.     School  houses  have  been  made  available 

73 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

for  neighborhood  activities.  Sunlight  and  fresh  air  for  the  homes  and 
factories  of  the  future  have  been  protected  by  the  Zoning  law.  No 
administration  since  consolidation  has  done  so  much  to  make  the  city 
a  better  place  in  which  to  live  and  work  for  all  its  citizens. 

Police 

Under  the  Fusion  administration  the  police  force  has  been  di- 
vorced from  politics.  By  a  strong,  straightforward  policy  the  work 
of  purging  the  department  of  its  dishonest  and  inefficient  minority 
has  gone  steadily  forward  with  the  co-operation  of  the  honest  and 
hardworking  majority  of  the  force.  Lawlessness  has  been  curbed,  the 
gangs  have  disappeared,  gunmen  have  fled  the  city  or  gone  to  jail, 
bomb  outrages  have  stopped,  public  prostitution  and  gambling  have 
been  reduced,  corrupt  partnership  of  the  police  with  crime  and  the 
levying  of  tribute  upon  legitimate  business  has  been  destroyed  and 
ended. 

If  Mayor  Mitchel  is  re-elected  Commissioner  Woods  will  be  re- 
tained in  oflace.  If  Tammany  is  returned  to  power,  police  debauchery 
and   incompetence  will  again  disgrace  New  York. 

Civil    Service 

The  Fusion  administration  has  sustained  and  extended  the 
merit  system  in  the  Civil  Service.  Salaries  of  the  lowest  paid  employees 
have  been  increased.  Differences  in  pay  for  equal  work  have  been 
wiped  out.    Wider  opportunities  for  advancement  have  been  opened. 

The    Future    Under    Fusion 

Upon  such  a  record  the  Fusion  administration  rests  its  claim  for 
public  confidence  in  its  promises  for  the  future. 

The  development  of  the  city's  educational  facilities  will  go  for- 
ward with  increased  effectiveness. 

Fusion  believes  in  more  parks  and  playgrounds;  in  increasing 
milk  stations  and  public  health  works;  in  the  establishment  of  great 
public  wholesale  terminal  markets;  in  the  maintenance  of  public  em- 
ployment bureaus  and  of  pensions  for  widows  with  dependent  children. 

Fusion  has  so  improved  the  administrative  capacity  and  con- 
served the  financial  resources  of  the  city  government  as  to  lay  the 
foundation  for  a  great  expansion  in  the  serices  of  the  government  to 
the  people. 

It  sought  from  the  Legislature  the  power  to  buy  and  sell  food 
at  cost  during  the  war.  It  favors  the  adoption  of  the  Torrens 
system  of  registering  land  titles,  as  proposed  by  County  Register 
Hopper,  with  public  insurance  of  such  titles. 

Fusion  proposes  an  expansion  of  municipal  ownership  by  elim- 
inating the  private  water  companies  and  by  the  progressive  acquisi- 
tion of  electrical  conduits. 

74 


Fusion's  Platform  of  1917 


If  a  satisfactory  contract  for  the  private  operation  of  the  Brook- 
lyn Marginal  Railway  cannot  in  the  immediate  future  be  reached 
Fusion  favors  its  municipal  operation  without  further  delay.  It  will 
not  hesitate  to  take  similar  steps  in  other  cases  wherever  municipal 
ownership  or  operation  is  in  the  public  interest  and  within  the  financial 
resources  of  the  city. 

The  narrow  borrowing  margin  which  today  is  the  chief  bar  to 
the  municipalization  of  public  services  is  the  result  of  the  Tammany 
dishonesty,  profligacy  and  extravagance  in  the  past,  which  dissipated 
the  borrowing  power  of  the  city.  Fusion  has  had  the  courage  to  con- 
serve this  borrowing  power  even  at  the  cost  of  temporarily  higher 
budgets.  The  longest  stride  towards  municipal  ownership  was  taken 
by  the  present  city  administration  when  it  adopted  the  pay-as-you-go 
policy,  which,  by  putting  an  end  to  borrowing  for  non-productive  im- 
provements, will  gradually  produce  a  margin  of  credit  sufficient  to 
allow  the  oity  to  acquire  the  most  vital  of  its  public  utilities. 

Fusion  stands  for  complete  municipal  home  rule.  Fusion  believes 
that  the  people  of  New  York  City  should  have  the  right  to  make  and 
amend  their  city  charter,  that  legislative  interferences  with  local 
affairs  should  end,  that  the  city  should  have  justice  equally  with  the 
rest  of  the  state  at  the  hands  of  the  state  legislature  in  the  matter 
of  taxation  and  in  the  expenditure  of  state  funds.  Fusion  will  con- 
tinue to  press  the  state  to  assume  the  support  of  the  state  functions 
now  unjustly  made  city  charges. 

Fusion  will  continue  co-operation  with  the  other  municipalities 
of  the  state  through  the  State  Conference  of  Mayors,  to  the  end  that 
home  rule  may  be  secured  by  cities  and  unjust  burdens  lifted. 

Fusion  is  comonitted  to  the  comprehensive  development  of  the 
Port  of  New  York.  In  the  past  four  years  it  has  added  more  dockage 
than  any  other  previous  administration. 

An  essential  detail  of  such  development  is  the  relocation  of  the 
New  York  Central  Railroad  along  the  West  Side  of  the  Borough  of 
Manhattan.  For  the  sake  of  the  city's  food  supply,  for  the  sake  of 
its  manufacturing  supremacy,  and  for  the  protection  of  its  citizens  on 
the  public  highways,  a  solution  must  be  found  and  found  without  delay. 

Fusion  will  co-operate  with  the  Public  Service  Commission  to 
find  such  a  solution,  and  failing,  to  exercise  effective  compulsion  on 
the  company. 

Fusion  believes  in  the  most  liberal  degree  of  borough  autonomy 
consistent  with  effective  organization  and  serviceable  government. 
Most  of  the  city  departments  should  have  in  each  borough  capable 
representatives  with  sufficient  authority  to  deal  with  local  questions 
for  the  convenience  of  the  citizens  of  the  borough.  In  determining 
questions  of  economy  adequate  weight  should  be  given  to  any  expense 
or  inconvenience  caused  to  citizens  of  other  boroughs  by  being  com- 
pelled to  visit  or  commuunicate  with  officers  located  only  in  the  Bor- 
ough of  Manhattan. 

75 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

The  Alternative   Is   Tammany 

The  alternative  offered  to  the  voters  is  a  return  to  Tammany 
misrule.  Against  this  we  vehemently  protest.  Tammany  in  succes- 
sive administrations  brought  the  city  to  the  verge  of  financial  ruin, 
debauched  the  police  force,  permitted  and  even  exploited  vice  and 
crime,  neglected  the  welfare  and  comfort  of  citizens,  substituted  favor- 
itism for  service  and,  in  an  abandon  of  greed  and  evil  practices,  so 
outraged  the  public  conscience  that  it  was  driven  from  power,  in  a 
normally  Democratic  city.  It  is  now  eight  years  since  Tammany 
has  been  permitted  unrestricted  rule. 

Two  present  examples  give  proof  that  a  quick  relapse  to  former 
conditions  would  follow  Tammany's  return  to  power.  For  twelve 
years  the  voters  of  New  York  City  refused  to  entrust  the  office  of 
District  Attorney  to  a  Tammany  candidate,  but  two  years  ago  a 
Tammany  District  Attorney  was  elected.  During  his  short  encum- 
bency  the  office  has  been  prostituted.  Partisanship  has  run  rampant. 
The  office  of  prosecutor  has  been  turned  to  political  uses.  Tammany 
wrongdoers  have  been  protected  from  prosecution.  Coercion  of  the 
most  despicable  character  has  been  practised  upon  the  weak  and  un- 
fortunate. On  a  number  of  occasions  the  Governor  of  the  State  has 
been  compelled  to  take  important  prosecutions  out  of  the  District 
Attorney's  hands.  The  efficiency  and  moral  tone  of  the  office  is  now 
undeniably  at  its  lowest  ebb  and  constitutes  a  warning  of  what  would 
inevitably  follow  the  restoration  of  Tammany  to  the  administration 
of  the  city. 

Another  example  is  Tammany's  present  campaign.  At  a  time 
when  the  national  welfare  requires  that  we  should  emphasize  all  of 
those  obligations  and  aims  which  we  have  in  common,  Tammany 
seeks  to  array  the  poor  against  the  rich;  to  excite  class  hatred;  and, 
in  hope  of  retaining  the  vote  of  the  disaffected,  to  avoid  any  discussion 
of  the  relation  of  the  municipal  election  to  the  prosecution  of  the  great 
war.  It  is  increasingly  plain,  that  every  element,  every  faction,  every 
individual  in  the  City  of  New  York  who  is  opposed  to  the  vigorous 
prosecution  of  the  war — opposed  to  the  maintenance  of  strong,  ener- 
getic, alert  government  in  the  city  during  the  war,  is  sought  by 
Tammany  as  an  ally. 

With  the  record  of  the  Fusion  administration  as  the  test  of 
our  promises  for  future  service  and  progress,  and  with  the  record 
of  Tammany  as  a  warning  to  voters  we  commit  with  confidence  the 
Fusion  candidates  to  the  common  sense  and  patriotism  of  the  people 
of  New  York. 


76 


Institute  for  Public  Service  on  Government  Reform 

EXHIBIT  II 

Attitude  Toward  Reform 

of  the 
Institute  for  Public  Service 

The  first  two  purposes  of  the  Institute  for  PubHc  Service 
as  mentioned  in  the  special  act  creating  it  are 

to  conduct  training-  for  public  service  through  assign- 
ments of  practical  fi^ld  work  that  needs  to  be  done  and 
to  study  methods  of  securing  efficient  citizenship  that  will 
provide  cumulative,  non-political,  non-partisan,  imperson- 
al attention  to  the  methods,  acts,  results  and  needs  of 
public  business,  higher  education,  and  benevolent  foun- 
dations. 

The  chairman  of  the  Institute  for  Public  Service,  Julius 
H.  Barnes  of  Duluth  and  New  York,  was  president  of  U.  S. 
Grain  Corporation  from  1917  to  1919  and  wheat  director  from 
1919  to  1920,  and  has  never  had  any  other  relations  with 
government  except  those  of  an  individual  citizen  and  member 
of  chamber  of  commerce  committees  working  for  wider  citi- 
zen cooperation  with  governing  agencies  through  more  defi- 
nite knowledge  of  government  acts  and  community  needs. 

Eda  Amberg,  as  part  of  field  training  for  public  service, 
helped  collect  and  marshall  the  information  contained  in  this 
pamphlet. 

Associated  with  the  Institute  as  supervisory  members  are 
officers  of  civic  agencies  in  Detroit,  Dayton,  Toronto,  Minne- 
apolis, Akron,  Kansas  City,  Philadelphia,  Richmond,  Grand 
Rapids,  etc  which  exist  only  for  the  promotion  of  that  type 
of  non-political  reform  .which  w^orks  for  efficient,  socially- 
minded  government  no  matter  who's  elected.  For  information 
about  successful  efforts  in  these  other  cities  to  increase  citizen 
attention  to  government  address  Dr.  H.  L.  Brittain,  Citizens 
Research  Institute,  Toronto,  Canada ;  Walter  Matscheck, 
Bureau  of  Public  Service,  Kansas  City,  Mo ;  F.  L.  Olson, 
Municipal  Research  Committee  of  the  Civic  and  Commerce 
Association,  Minneapolis,  Minn ;  Dr.  D.  C.  Sowers,  Bureau  of 
Municipal  Research,  Akron,  Ohio';  Dr.  L.  D.  Upson,  director 

77 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

of  the  Governmental  Research  Bureau  and  C.  E.  Rightor, 
former  director  of  the  Dayton  Bureau  of  Research,  542  Gris- 
wold  Street,  Detroit,  Michigan;  Albert  Cross,  120  West  15, 
Philadelphia ;  Col.  Le  Roy  Hodges,  State  House,  Richmond, 
Va;  A.  N.  Farmer,  Perkins  Building,  Grand  Rapids,  Michi- 
gan ;  Dr.  Jesse  D.  Burks,  University  of  California ;  Clarence 
B.  Greene,  Dayton,  Ohio;  Harry  Freeman,  City  Manager, 
Kalamazoo,  Mich ;  Frank  S.  Staley,  Foreign  Trading  Finance 
Corporation,  New  York ;  C.  N.  Hitchcock,  Barnes-Ames  Co, 
New  Yor;  Arch  Mandel,  542  Griswold  St.,  Detroit. 

Not  formally  connected  with  tlie  Institute,  but  able  to 
speak  in  detail  of  successful  governmental  research  are  F.  P. 
Gruenberg,  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research,  Philadelphia; 
James  W.  Routh,  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research,  Rochester, 
New  York;  Rufus  E.  Miles,  Ohio  Institute  for  Public  Effici- 
ency, Columbus;  H.  S.  Keeler,  Chicago  Bureau  of  Public 
Efficiency. 

Gaylord  C.  Cummin,  consultant  on  municipal  problems, 
was  a  reform  but  non-political  city  engineer  in  Dayton,  Ohio, 
before  and  during  the  city  manager  plan's  first  try-out;  was 
a  reform  but  non-political  city  manager  of  Jackson  and  Grand 
Rapids,  Michigan,  with  results  in  service  that  proved  it  pos- 
sible to  secure  public  support  for  non-political  management  of 
city  business.  Since  1919  he  has  made  studies  for  Ohio's 
joint  legislative  committee  on  administrative  reorganization, 
for  Michigan's  community  council  commission  on  after-war 
needs  and  opportunities  and  for  a  committee  of 
business  men  to  promote  public  understclnding  of 
this  Institute's  reports  on  Michigan's  governmental 
organization,  governmental  needs  and  opportunities;  for 
Columbus,  Portsmouth,  Cuyahoga  Falls,  Ohio,  chambers  of 
commerce  on  fire,  sewers,  charter  and  other  city  needs;  for 
Mr.  John  H.  Patterson  on  the  limitation  of  canal  transpor- 
tation, etc — always  as  a  reformer  in  the  sense  of  ahvays  being 
for  truth  no  matter  who  the  officials  were. 

William  H.  Allen,  director  of  the  Institute  for  Public 
Service,  has  worked  for  different  kinds  of  reform  in  govern- 
ment since  1900;  as  first  secretary  of  the  National  Municipal 
League's  committee  on  instruction  in  municipal  government; 
as  secretary  of  the  New  Jersey  State  Charities  Aid  and  Prison 

78 


Institute  for  Public  Service  on  Government  Reform 

Reform  Association ;  as  general  agent  of  the  New  York  Asso- 
ciation for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the  Poor;  as  secretary 
of  the  Child  Welfare  Committee,  the  first  milk  conference  and 
New  York  Milk  Committee,  and  the  Committee  on  Hospital 
Needs  and  Hospital  Finances;  as  one  outliner  and  money 
raiser  for  the  Bureau  of  City  Betterment  and  the  Bureau  of 
Municipal  Research  from  1905-1914;  as  unsuccessful  protestor 
in  1914  against  the  abandonment  by  the  Bureau  of  Municipal 
Research  of  its  program  for  enlisting  the  public  in  work  for 
better  government  by  giving  it  information  about  govern- 
ment no  matter  who's  elected ;  as  organizer  of  government  re- 
search bureaus  in  other  cities;  as  surveyor  of  cities  and  state 
governments  and  special  agencies  of  government  like  rural  and 
city  schools,  normal  schools,  universities;  as  director  of  the 
Institute  for  Public  Service  from  1915  on;  as  promoter  of 
citizen  interest  in  government  through  books  like  Efficient 
Democracy,  Woman's  Part  in  Government,  Modern  Philan- 
thropy, Universal  Training  for  Citizenship,  Self  Surveys  by 
Colleges  and  Universities,  etc,  and  through  addresses;  as 
worker  for  reform  by  whatever  party  and  whatever  officer  was 
in  position  to  take  forward  steps  without  regard  to  party  or 
faction,  and  as  almost  constant  collaborator  with  Fusion  re- 
form leaders, — as  well  as  with  so-called  Tammany  officers — 
of  New  York  City  from  1903  to  1914  and  again  through  two 
years  of  Fusion  Reform,  1916-1917. 

During  the  campaign  of  1917  Fusion  Reform's  publicity 
director  asked  the  director  of  the  Institute  for  Public  Service 
if  we  wanted  Mitchel  or  Hylan  to  win.  The  answer  was  that 
we  were  not  interested  in  which  man  won.  When  pressed 
for  yes  or  no  we  answered  that  w^e  had  been  schooling  our- 
selves for  ten  years  to  seek  results  for  the  public  no  matter 
who  was  elected.  When  still  further  pressed  for  an  answer 
we  replied  that  we  would  vastly  rather  see  Mitchel  lose  while 
standing  for  the  truth  than  win  by  publicity  and  campaigning 
that  did  not  tell  the  truth.  This  conversation  was  immediately 
repeated  in  person  to  Mayor  Mitchel.  who  turned  to  one  of 
his  aids  and  said :  "Allen  is  right.  I  can  make  no  headway 
with  an  audience  unless  I  face  the  music."  Repeatedly  from 
December  1915  to  November  1917  the  Institute  took  up  with 
Mayor  Mitchel  the  questions  treated  in  Civic  Lessons  from 
Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat.    At  numerous  times  these  interviews 

79 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 


led  to  constructive  action.  The  trouble  was  that  too  few 
people  were  trying  to  help  the  mayor  help  the  whole  city  and 
see  things  as  the  general  public  saw  them. 

When  Fusion  lost  the  election  of  1917  it  was  clear  that  it 
would  be  easier  for  the  new  administration  to  take  forward 
steps  if  non-partisan  governmental  research  and  publicity 
could  be  assured. 

We  wrote  to  the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research  that  we 
considered  it  of  extreme  importance  for  New  York  to  have 
such  a  program  during  the  next  four  years,  that  if  that  or- 
ganization planned  to  cover  the  field  we  would  keep  out  of 
it  but  if  that  organization  did  not  plan  to  cover  the  field  the 
Institute  for  Public  Service  group  of  governmental  researchers 
here  and  in  other  cities  would  attempt  to  raise  the  funds  for 
this  work.  We  were  answered  that  the  Bureau  had  *'a  com- 
prehensive program  and  ample  funds."  We  therefore  planned 
our  work  in  other  directions. 

However  ample  its  funds  and  comprehensive  its  pro- 
gram the  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research  has  given  no  sign  of 
even  seeing  the  field  in  New  York  iCity,  not  to  mention  cover- 
ing it.  The  breakdown  of  its  program  has  cost  New  York 
and  the  country  incalculably. 

Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat  in  1917  is 
issued  before  the  municipal  campaign  of  1921  formally  opens 
to  help  New  York  remember  in  1921  its  earlier  conviction 
that  in  addition  to  all  that  is  done  by  citizens  within  parties 
there  is  urgent  need  for  non-partisan,  non-factional,  impersonal 
citizen  attention  to  government  acts  no  matter  who's  elected. 


80 


A  National  Propaganda  Needed 


EXHIBIT  III 

12  Governmental  Researchers  Outside  New  York  to  the 
Director  of  the  Institute  for  PubHc  Service.   I -28- 1 921 

For  a  number  of  years  the  growth  of  effective  government 
in  this  country  has  been  retarded  by  the  absence  of  aggressive 
propaganda  pointing  out  the  results  that  can  be  obtained  thru 
continuous  citizen  participation.  Although  many  of  the 
Bureaus  of  Governmental  Research  and  other  civic  agencies 
have  been  able  to  influence  the  character  of  government  in 
their  immediate  vicinities,  none  of  them  has  been  in  the  finan- 
cial and  strategic  position  to  mould  public  opinion  over  the 
whole  country. 

For  five  years  the  Governmental  Research  Conference  has 
considered  this  question  and  attempted  to  devise  some  means 
of  nation-wide  activity.  So  far  these  efforts  have  been  without 
material  results.  Yet  with  the  growling  complexity  of  govern- 
ment— municipal,  county  and  state — and  the  increasing  re- 
sponsibilities thrown  upon  governments,  it  seems  almost  im- 
perative that  the  interest  and  aid  of  some  group  of  leading 
men  be  enlisted  in  this  effort. 

Now,  you  were  the  founder  of  the  movement  for  getting 
good  government  thru  directed  and  applied  citizen  interest 
in  supporting  effective  government;  you  were  the  first  to 
utilize  the  machinery  of  government  as  a  means  of  training 
men  for  civic  leadership ;  the  men  trained  under  your  direction 
have  been  important  agents  in  the  progress  of  the  past  de- 
cade, and  you  have  been  a  consistent  and  aggressive  advocate 
of  sound  government  throughout  the  country.  It  now  seems 
opportune  to  urge  again  the  advantages  that  will  accrue  from 
active  citizen  participation  in  public  affairs  and  for  training 
men,  by  practical  experience,  for  professional  participation  in 
public  affairs. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  but  natural  that  we  ask 
that  you  assume  the  leadership  of  an  extensive  group  of  men 
engaged  in  governmental  research,  and  that  you  undertake 
an  aggressive  program  of  work  both  in  and  out  of  New  York 
City;  and  to  make  possible  this  end,  that  you  use  your  best 
efforts  to  enlist  the  interest  and  aid  of  broad-minded  citizens 
in  this  program. 

81 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

EXHIBIT  IV 

A  Real  Loyalty  Test 

for 

New  York  Voters 

That  it  was  not  a  test  of  any  New  Yorker's  loyalty  to  his 
country  whether  he  voted  for  Fusion,  against  Fusion,  or  for 
some  other  program  in  1917,  friends  of  Fusion  have  already 
testified. 

In  another  sense  every  voter  is  giving  a  test  of  his  loyalty 
to  the  highest  ideals  of  America  whenever  he  casts  a  vote. 
Almost  always,  however,  that  loyalty  test  depends  not  upon 
the  person  for  whom,  but  upon  the  reason  for  which,  he  votes. 

Loyalty  to  the  country's  expectation  of  Greater  New  York 
is  at  stake  in  the  attitude  of  civic  agencies  toward  government. 
Whether  it  wants  it  or  not,  for  good  or  for  evil,  every  country's 
metropolis,  just  because  of  its  bigness,  exercises  an  influence 
upon  the  rest  of  the  country.  If  cooperative  citizen  criticism 
of  government  breaks  down  in  New  York  City,  it  makes  it 
harder  for  every  other  locality  to  have  cooperative  citizen  criti- 
cism. More  strikingly  true  is  it  that  if  cooperative  criticism 
is  alive  in  New  York  City,  it  becomes  contagious  through  all 
parts  of  the  country,  as  proved  true  for  ten  years  prior  to 
Fusion's  election. 

How  leaders  in  civic  reform  work  in  several  other  cities 
regard  New  York's  opportunity  to  help  or  harm  is  stated  in 
the  following  extracts  from  letters  just  received  from  men  who 
did  not  know  that  we  were  even  planning  such  a  report  as 
Civic  Lessons  from   Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat  in   1917: 

1.  "The  absence  of  governmental  research  in  New  York 
City  since  1913  has  made  it  difficult  for  the  movement 
to  spread  as  it  did  in  former  years.  If  New  York  had 
continued  at  the  old  pace,  by  now  there  would  have 
been  citizen  agencies  of  research  in  every  city  in  the 
country." 

2.  "Since  the  demise  of  an  active  research  program  in 
New  York,  the  governmental  research  idea  has  al- 
most sunk  into  a  state  of  innocuous  desuetude.  In 
spite  of  the  fact  that  the  provinces  dislike  to  recognize 

82 


New  York  Voting  Affects  The  Natiion 

in  any  way  the  leadership  of  New  York  City,  yet  a 
good  job  done  in  New  York  in  the  government  field 
finds  followers  in  the  rest  of  the  country." 

3.  "Successful  citizen  research  in  New  York  would  be 
a  continual  stimulus  to  other  cities." 

4.  "We  never  hear  now-a-days  of  any  direct  applications 
of  constructive  ideas  being  offered  to  the  city  officials 
in  New  York  City,  nor  of  much-needed  publicity  to 
the  citizens  about  their  government.  If  these  services 
were  reinstated  upon  the  broad  and  effective  lines 
followed  for  some  years  prior  to  1915  the  effect  upon 
the  entire  country  would  be  magnetic." 

5.  "It  makes  a  great  difference  to  other  cities  in  the 
country  whether  New  York  has  a  strong  government- 
al research  program,  for  the  reason  that  we  are  natur- 
ally inclined  to  look  to  the  metropolis  for  inspiration 
and  example.  New  York  City  is  the  place  where  the 
greatest  amount  of  harm  is  done  by  failure  to  gather 
facts,  to  inform  the  public  about  them,  and  to  conduct 
social  laboratory  tests;  and  as  a  corollary  the  great- 
est opportunity  for  service  to  our  civilization  and  to 
mankind  is  there  possible.  Research  agencies  in  the 
interior  town  gain  or  lose  in  prestige  and  influence 
in  accordance  with  the  extent  to  which  governmental 
research  is  conducted  on  a  continual,  extensive, 
thorough  basis  in  New  York." 

6.  "There  is  no  more  pressing  need  in  the  country  at 
this  time  than  for  current,  independent,  critical  com- 
ment on  what  government  is  doing.  Such  a  program 
in  New  York  would  bring  to  bear  on  these  problems 
spotlight  publicity  that  would  reach  the  whole 
country.  By  all  means,  let  us  have  it  for  New  York's 
sake  and  for  the  sake  of  the  rest  of  the  country." 


S3 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

EXHIBIT  V 
Civic  Lessons  for  Future  Use 

by 

Ins,  Outs,  Independents,  Teachers  and  Students 

Wherever  and  whatever  they  are,  American  citizens  may 
learn  civic  lessons  from  Fusion  reform's  auto-collapse  in 
Greater  New  York  from  1914  to  1917. 

These  lessons  will  help  during  campaigns,  on  election 
day,  just  after  election  and  all-the-way  between  elections. 

Party  committees,  classes,  clubs  or  individuals  wishing 
further  information  with  respect  to  the  auto-collapse  of 
Fusion  reform  in  Greater  New  York  may  secure  it  by  apply- 
ing to  the  Institute  for  Public  Service,  1123  Amsterdam  Ave., 
at  115th  St.,  William  H.  Allen,  director. 

Because  different  people  have  different  reasons  for  seek- 
ing civic  lessons,  and  because  the  same  people  have  different 
interests  at  different  times,  the  civic  lessons  from  Mayor 
Mitchel's  defeat  in  1917  are  addressed  to  five  different  points 
of  view: 

1.  The  party  that  is  in, 

II.  The  party  that  is  out, 

III.  Independent,  open-to-influence  voters, 

IV.  Teachers  of  citizenship, 

V.     Students  and  promoters  of  public  service. 

I.     The  Party  That  Is  In  Power  Should  Remember 

1.  It  is  poor  politics  to  assume  that  any  preventable 
cause  of  voters'  dissatisfaction  will  prove  of  minor 
consequence  at  election  time.  Fusion  made  the  mis- 
take of  believing  that  the  public  would  forget^ specific 
grounds  for  complaint. 

2.  Because  the  Ins  are  always  on  the  defensive  any  mis- 
takes they  make  are  fair  game  for  the  Outs.  Tammany 
Hall  ceased  to  be  the  issue  when  Fusion  got  control 
of  New  York  City's  government. 

3.  Voters  do  not  put  off  liking  and  disliking  until  elec- 
tion time.    On  the  contrary  their  liking  and  disliking 

84 


Civic  Lessons  for  the  Ins 


begin  when  the  administration  begins  and  work  full 
time  every  day  of  the  administration.  Fusion  started 
preventable  dislikes  in  its  first  weeks  which  kept 
growing  and  losing  votes  until  election. 

4.  Voters  do  not  change  their  ideals  when  they  put  a 
new  crowd  in,  but  keep  right  on  disliking  broken 
pledges,  profiteering,  dishonesty,  bluffing,  evasion  and 
waste  wherever  these  can  be  proved.  All  of  the  hatred 
which  New  York  voters  had  earlier  felt  toward  Tam- 
many swung  its  hardest  against  widely  published 
Fusion  acts  which  seemed  first  cousins  to'  hated  Tam- 
many acts.  Voters  may  set  aside  many  issues  of  im- 
portance because  of  an  overshadowing  issue  like  a  5c. 
fare  in  New  York  City,  but  will  not  with  an  open  eye 
vote  for  broken  pledges,  graft,  waste  or  misrepresenta- 
tion. 

5.  It  is  safer — as  well  as  honester — to  admit  than  to 
evade  any  mistakes  the  public  is  talking  about.  Fusion 
platform  makers  lost  votes  by  advertising  unwilling- 
ness to  meet  squarely  several  issues  which  voters 
considered  of  first  importance. 

6.  It  is  bad  politics  to  mis-state  facts  if  the  other  side 
can  easily  turn  to  proof  of  mis-statement.  Fusion  lost 
heavily  by  making"  the  people  feel  that  advertisers 
were  willing  to  mis-state. 

7.  The  best  way  to  divert  attention  from  weaknesses  is 
to  admit  any  weaknesses  that  can  be  proved,  pledge 
to  avoid  them  in  the  future,  and  play  up  the  strong 
points.  The  proposed  "chamber  of  delights"  which 
it  is  said  the  Hylan  administration  will  exhibit  is 
good  tactics  if  there  goes  with  it  a  frank  admission 
of  whatever  "horrors"  the  work-chamber  contains. 
Fusion  might  have  diverted  attention  from  several 
of  its  weak  points  to  its  strong  points  if  it  had  con- 
fessed the  weak  ones  and  promised  to  correct  them 
or  avoid  repeating  them.  A  broken  pledge  is  a  weak 
spot  that  will  keep  on  attracting  attention  and  losing 
votes  until  it  is  frankly  admitted,  explained  so'  far  as 

85 


J  (VIC  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

possible  and  made  again  with  more  binding  assur- 
ances that  it  will  be  kept.  In  1921  the  Outs  have  al- 
ready begun  listing  unkept  pledges  of  the  Hylan  ad- 
ministration. For  Ins  to  claim  that  unkept  pledges 
were  kept  will  lose,  not  win,  votes. 

8.  The  Ins'  best  friends  are  critics  that  keep  the  spot- 
light on  mistakes  and  their  worst  enemies  are  would- 
be  friends  that  try  to  cover  up  mistakes.  The  present 
mayor  of  New  York  with  all  but  one  or  two  news- 
papers picking  on  him  is  safer  than  he  would  have 
been  with  all  the  newspapers  applauding  him.  At 
the  same  time,  he  is  more  in  danger  from  the  papers 
who  support  him  right  or  wrong  than  from  papers 
who  criticize  him  right  or  wrong.  Mayor  Mitchel 
would  have  been  re-elected  if  his  editorial  and  other 
friends  had  criticized  him  after  his  first  election  the 
way  they  did  after  his  defeat. 

9.  The  civic  ledger  has  two  sides,  debits  and  credits, 
and  each  of  its  sides  is  distinct  in  the  voter's  mind. 

At  election  time  voters  focus  attention  on  strong  likes 
or  dislikes.  They  do  not  strike  a  balance.  The  Dem- 
ocratic Party's  defeat  in  1918  and  1920  is  a  striking 
illustration.  Had  voters  put  likes  and  dislikes  in 
the  balance,  achievements  and  failures,  they  could 
hardly  have  voted  the  Democratic  Party  out  so  over- 
whelmingly. 

10.  Voters  have  a  right  to  take  good  points  for  granted 
and  to  remember  and  loud-pedal  the  evils.  Fusion 
never  ought  to  have  allowed  evils  to  accumulate. 

11.  News  has  more  influence  than  editorials.  Fusion  for- 
got this  and  kept  on  fooling  itself  into  the  mis-belief 
that  readers  of  pro-Fusion  papers  were  more  influenc- 
ed by  pro-Fusion  editorials  than  by  anti-Fusion 
news. 

12.  For  editorial  friends  of  the  Ins  to  focus  attention  on 
editorial  comment  when  this  is  different  from  the  news 
which  is  being  given  to  the  public  only  hurts  the  Ins. 
Fusion  editors  only  weakened  their  cause  by  urging 

86 


Civic  Lessons  for  the  Ins 


citizens  to  disbelieve  what  their  own  news  coiumns 
were  printing. 

13.  In  most  American  localities  news  gets  to  the  public 
in  spite  of  editorial  bias.  While  the  political  attitude 
of  the  pro-Fusion  newspaper  management  often  af- 
fected" the  amount  of  news  unfavorable  to  Fusion  it 
did  not  keep   the  shutters  down  and  the   light  out. 

14.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to  under-estimate  the  strength 
of  opposing  papers  or  to  assume  that  readers  of  papers 
which  favor  are  unanimous.  Fusion  officers,  like 
Tammany  officers  before  them,  were  fond  of  saying 
publicly  that  they  never  even  read  certain  apposing 
papers.  Enough  readers  to  swing  elections  choose 
their  newspapers  for  other  reasons  than  political  bias. 

15.  Publicity  depends  upon  the  truth's  getting  out  rather 
than  upon  the  number  or  circulation  of  the  papers 
which  print  it. 

16.  Ins  are  quite  often  in  because  independents  have  want- 
ed to  vote  or  keep  someone  else  out,  rather  than  for 
love  of  Ins.  In  New  York  in  1913  both  motives  work- 
ed; the  people  wanted  to  keep  out  the  Tammany 
candidate  and  wanted  to  try  further  the  Fusion  can- 
didates. In  1917  voters  wanted  first  of  all  to  vote 
out  Fusion. 

17.  The  school  issue  always  favors  the  Outs  if  schools 
are  under-supported.  New  York's  Ins  in  1921  cannot 
get  voters  excited  over  Fusion's  earlier  failure  to 
provide  seats  if  just  before  election  more  children  are 
without  seats  in  1921  than  in  1917. 

18.  Exaggeration,  unfairness  and  mis-statement  while 
sometimes  helpful  to  Outs,  are  almost  certain  to  hurt 
the  Ins. 

19.  It  is  the  size  and  vividness  of  the  public's  impres- 
sion, not  the  size  of  a  disliked  act  that  determines 
the  importance  of  the  broken  or  evaded  pledge. 

20.  Minor  issues  are  sometimes  the  appetizer  or  opening 
wedge  necessary  to  make  major  issues  understood. 

87 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

21.  Pettiness  and  hypocrisy  are  hated  by  voters  more 
than  is  profiteering  or  political  grafting  on  a  large 
scale. 

22.  Vague  statements,  unspecific  pledges,  wordy  and  in- 
definite platforms  will  lose  votes  for  the  Ins  if  the 
Outs  make  specific  charges  and  pledges.     ' 

.  23.  Minor  officers  who  refuse  to  be  party  to  the  anti-social 
acts  by  the  main  candidates  will  be  carried  down  in 
most  elections  because  the  public  will  think  of  the 
main  candidates.  In  voting  against  the  Fusion 
mayor  and  comptroller  voters  snowed  under  Borough 
President  Marks  in  spite  of  his  own  opposition  to 
those  same  disapproved  acts. 

24.  Voters  hold  in  mind  not  merely  the  past  but  the  future 
and  will  often  continue  in  power  a  party  whose  main 
acts  they  thoroughly  disapprove  because  they  believe 
this  party  safer  with  all  its  faults  than  the  party  out 
of  power.  No  arguments  about  broken  pledges  or 
minor  wastefulness  and  incompetence  will  be  effec- 
tive in  New  York  City  in  1921  if  the  final  line-up  is 
Fusion  for  an  8c.  fare  and  anti-Fusion  for  a  5c.  fare 
unless  new  evidence  is  given  that  an  8c.  fare  will  be 
better  for  the  public. 

25.  Every  party  that  is  in  needs  the  help  of  a  non-par- 
tisan, outside  citizen  agency  that  will  tell  the  truth 
even  if  it  is  unpleasant,  for  this  enables  the  party  to 
reduce  its  mistakes,  to  keep  its  pledges  and  to  render 
new  service. 

II.     The  Party  TTiat  Is  Out  of  Power  Should  Remember 

1.  .  The  weak  points  of  the  administration  are  its  own  bad 

record  not  the  former  good  record  of  the  Outs. 

2.  The  public's  dislike  for  waste,  broken  pledges,  or 
graft  by  the  Ins  will  not  be  weakened  by  admission 
that  some  former  candidates  of  the  Outs  made  mis- 
takes, but  will  be  weakened  by  a  denial  of  well-re- 
membered mistakes.     It  will  only  lose  votes  for  the 

88 


Civic  Lessons  for  the  Outs 


Outs  in  1921  if  they  try  to  put  a  halo  over  their  own 
administration  of  1914-1917.  If  the  public  is  asked 
to  compare  Hylan  performance  with  Hylan  pledges  it 
will  do  so,  but  if  it  is  asked  to  compare  Hylan  pledges 
with  Mitchel  successes  it  will  only  bring  back  unkept 
Mitchel  pledges  and  renew  the  resentment  of   1917. 

3.  The  Ins'  unkept  pledges  are  good  talking  points  for 
the  Outs  so  far  as  it  can  be  proved  that  pledges  have 
not  been  kept  and  could  reasonably  have  been  kept  in 
spite  of  any  limiting  war  time  priority  rules. 

4.  Few  majorities  can  be  agitated  over  evidence  that  a 
candidate  has  lacked  certain  kinds  of  book  education 
or  society  manners.  Elections  are  won  by  voters,  not 
by  academic  degrees.  To  try  to  stir  up  antagonism 
to  the  present  mayor  by  quoting  "art  artists"  will 
prove  a  boomerang.  It  will  be  just  as  futile  to  urge 
the  class  or  highbrow  argument  against  the  present 
administration  as  it  was  to  press  it  in  behalf  of  the 
Fusion  administration. 

5.  Vague  charges,  unspecified  pledges,  wordy  and  in^ 
definite  platforms  are  poor  tactics  for  Outs,  especially 
in  a  municipal  campaign  where  issues  are  clear.     If 

a'  5c.  fare  is  at  stake  in  1921  New  York  voters  will 
not  be  mesmerized  by  general  talk  about  either  past 
or  future. 

6.  By  admitting  mistakes  made  when  last  in  power  the 
Outs  can  win  large  blocks  of  votes  against  conditions 
that  the  Ins  have  failed  to-  correct.  Those  who  voted 
against  the  Ins  in  1917  because  of  overcrowded 
schools,  police  errors  and  unsolved  West  Side  plan 
are  far  more  apt  to  vote  against  the  present  Ins  on 
the  same  grounds  if  the  Outs  do  not  claim  that  their 
own  record  was  perfect. 

7.  The  Outs  will  only  injure  their  cause  if  they  atttack 
the  Ins  for  failures  which  can  be  shown  to  be  entire- 
ly or  chiefly  or  even  largely  due  to  war  conditions  and 
their  consequences.  The  public's  sense  of  fair  play 
is  keen.  For  that  very  reason  it  will  help  the  Outs 
if  they  catch  the  Ins  dodging  behind  or  pretending 
war  difficulties. 


89 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

8.  Revival  of  issues  which  caused  defeat  in  earlier  elec- 
tions, will  hurt  the  Outs  unless  they  first  remove 
legitimate  objections  to*  those  issues.  For  example, 
the  New  York  work-study-play  .plan  must  be  shown 
as  a  method  of  freeing  not  hampering  the  working 
man's  child  before  Outs  can  win  votes  for  it.  This 
means  admitting  mistakes  made  in  furthering  it  from 
1914  to  1917. 

9.  Old  prejudices  against  the  Ins  can  best  be  fanned 
into  flame  by  specific  proof  or  believable  assertion  of 
specific  wrong  doing  or  under-doing.  "Tammany" 
does  not  damn  anything  in  New  York  after  the  pop- 
ular conceptions  of  Mayor  Gaynor  and  Governor  Al 
Smith.  The  foremost  present  Ins  in  New  York  are 
not  Tammany  men.  ''Oust  Tammany"  will  prove  a 
child's  slogan  in  1921  unless  specific  evils  are  cited  of 
luridness  and  size  which  will  revive  old  pictures  of 
Tammany  at  its  worst. 

10.  The  leaders  and  backers  of  Outs  are  fair  game  for 
criticism.  It  will  hurt  any  reform  co»mmittee  to  put 
i  t  in  charge  of  persons  who  have  pecuniary  interests 
at  stake  in  an  election  or  who  are  widely  suspected 
of  being  influenced  by  those  who  have  such  interests. 
In  New  York  an  undemocratically  organized  reform 
committee  will  be  a  source  of  weakness  in  1921.  Can- 
didates, managers  or  backers  who  in  1917  defended 
the  mistakes  of  the  Mitchel  administration  will  Avin 
confidence  in  1921  only  by  first  confessing  the  earlier 
mistakes  and  promising  not  to  repeat  them. 

11.  It  is  secrecy  not  size  of  campaign  disbursements  that 
threatens    the    Outs.      The    slushiness    of    the    1917 

Slush  Fund  was  due  not  to  its  hugeness  but  to  its 
uses  and  to  the  secrecy  of  its  sources  and  uses.  It 
would  be  very  unfair  to  reform  causes  if  public  senti- 
ment or  law  were  to  prevent  large  campaign  funds 
being  given  and  spent  in  the  open.  The  sources  of  its 
moral  backing  hurt  Fusion  more  in  1917  than  the 
sources  of  its  financial  backing.  Had  $65  paid  to  a 
preacher  been  reported  as  ''rent  of  hall  and  cab  hire" 

90 


Civic  Lessons  for  the  Outs 


both  law  and  decency  would  have  been  just  as  clearly- 
violated  as  when  $6500  paid  to  a  preacher  was 
charged  to  rent  of  hall  and  cab  hire. 

12.  Faked  non-partisanship  is  seldom  stronger  than  avow- 
ed partisanship.  If  Fusion  is  to  be  actually  a  combine 
for  giving  the  Republican  party  control  in  New  York 
it  will  be  weaker  in  1921  than  a  straight  Republican 
fight. 

13.  The  campaigning  period  is  too  short  for  citizens  or 
even  political  parties  as  now  organized  to  get  facts 
unless  citizen  agencies  have  been  busy  getting 
and  publishing  them  between  elections  and  getting 
public  officials  to  find  and  publish  them.  Fusion  is 
at  a  great  disadvantage  in  New  York  in  1921  because 
it  has  failed  during  the  last  four  years  to  get  and  to 
give  the  pubHc  impartial  facts  and  to  help  city  officers 
use  them. 

14.  So  far  as  Outs  are  non-partisan  an  absolutely  open 
warfare  will  pay  best.  Side  shows,  faked  revolts 
among  the  Ins,  "smart"  tactics  and  "trick  publicity" 
may  occasionally  help  political  parties  but  almost 
always  hurt  reformers  and  reform. 


III.      Independent  Voters  Should  Remember 

1.  It  is  independents  or  open-to-influence  party  members 
who  swing  elections.  The  municipalities  where  nom- 
ination means  election  are  few. 

2.  It  is  while  they  are  undecided  that  independents  have 
influence.  Fusion's  distribution  di  patronage  in  1914 
was  due  to  pre-election  promises  not  to  post-election 
gratitude.  The  public  to  whom  non-political,  non- 
partisan appointments  were  promised  was  not  as  good 
a  collector  as  were  politicians  to  whom  positions  were, 
promised;  or  the  public  was  satisfied  with  a  less  spe- 
cific pledge  than  was  given  the  politicians.  The  in- 
dependent voter  should  make  his  terms  with  candi- 
dates before   election,   in   the   open,   and   specifically. 

91 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchel's  Defeat 

3.  Independents  should  be  on  the  lookout  for  party 
managers  who  think  they  can  "deliver"  voters  and 
that  voters  will  forget  preventable  mistakes, — and 
vote  the  other  way. 

4.  Few  elected  officers  will  keep  their  pledges  and  faith- 
fully represent  the  public  unless  unofficial  civic  agen- 
cies insist  upon  truth  finding  and  truth  telling  be- 
tween elections.  It  is  only  by  between-election 
attention  that  citizens  can  be  sure  that  through  the 
play  of  personalities  and  parties  at  election  time  the 
public  will  keep  on  benefiting  no  matter  who  is  elec- 
ted. 

5.  Every  city  needs  a  continuing  inspection  or  audit  of 
operation  results.  If  this  cannot  be  secured  by  civic 
agencies  alone,  the  charter  should  provide  for  agen- 
cies to  be  named  by  the  city  comptroller  with  power 
and  duty  to  inspect  administrative  departments  and 
to  report  gains  made  and  corrections  needed  to  the 
public. 

6.  Only  by  non-partisanship  and  independence  of  criticism 
can  civic  agencies  earn  the  respect  of  officials  which  is 
the  basis  for  cooperation  with  officials.  One  night  in 
1913,  a  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research  director,  wrote 
to  one  of  his  trustees  that  the  last  two  things  he  had 
done  were  to  draft  a  tentative  outline  of  a  speech  to 
be  made  by  the  chairman  of  the  Fusion  or  anti-Tam- 
many mass  meeting  that  was  to  open  the  campaign, 
and  to  draft  a  tentative  outline  of  a  platform  and 
program  for  a  Tammany  candidate.  Both  sides  knew 
that  this  agency  was  willing  to  render  that  service  to 
both  sides  and  would  attempt  to  interest  both  in  a  pro- 
gram which  would  benefit  all  the  people. 

7.  The  vast  majority  of  voters  will  not  vote  against  their 
ideals  or  without  using  ideals. 

8.  Independents  cannot  afford  to  use  their  votes  as  re- 
wards for  keeping  pledges.  Why  not  tip  our  grocer 
for  giving  us  correct  weights?  Why  should  we  vote 
for  a  public  officer  because  he  kept  a  pledge  except  as 

92 


Civic  Lessons  for  Independent  Voters 

the  keeping  of  old  pledges  carries  assurance  that  new 
pledges  will  be  kept?  The  only  reward  which  officers 
deserve  for  keeping  pledges  is  protection  from  being 
successfully  misrepresented  by  claims  that  they  have 
not  kept  pledges. 

9.  Independents  gain  and  hold  influence  by  keeping  a 
double  entry  memory  of  promises  and  performances 
and  by  exacting  specific  pledges  for  the  future.     To 

forget  or  condone  preventable  mistakes  is  to  victimize 
independents  and  public.  Keep  asking  *'For  instance," 
"Please  specify,"  "Will  you  do  this?"  Politicians 
have  greatest  respect  for  the  voter  who  thinks  double 
entry  with  debits  and  credits  clearly  listed  and  neither 
erased. 

10.  Causes  can  better  afford  to  admit  that  their  leaders 
made  mistakes  than  to  sponsor  those  mistakes. 
Friends  of  reform  who  deny  or  hide  reformers'  mis- 
takes do  more  harm  than  outspoken  enemies  can  do. 


IV.     Suggestions  for  Teachers  of  Citizenship 

1.  Look  for  applications  to  yourself  as  individual  voter 
and  teacher  in  the  lessons  for  Outs,  Ins,  and  Indepen- 
dents. 

2.  Before  your  classes  refuse  to  take  a  party  position. 

3.  Interest  students  in  the  adventure  and  exhilaration  of 
suspending  judgment  until  assertions  are  traced  back 
to  incontrovertible  facts  or  statements. 

4.  Interest  classes  in  the  tactics  of  campaigning  within 
and  upon  the  truth. 

5.  Refuse  to  accept  statements  for  or  against  any  party 
or  any  policy  that  are  not  based  upon  concrete,  prov- 
able facts. 

6.  Help  students  feel  for  the  dramatic  opportunity  which 
Fusion  reform  had,  used,  lost,  and  may  have  again 
in  New  York. 

93 


Civic  Lessons  from  Mayor  Mitchells  Defeat 

7.  Be  sure  that  every  student  sees  that  where  informa- 
tion about  official  acts  and  community  needs  is  con- 
stantly given  to  the  public,  the  public  is  bound  to  w^in 
better  and  better  government,  no  matter  which  party 
or  candidate  wins  or  loses   elections. 

8.  Let  no  child  leave  your  class  who  does  not  see  that 
his  loyalty  to  American  ideals  is  at  stake  not  only  in 
the  way  he  votes  but  in  the  way  he  seeks  and  uses  in- 
formation about  government. 

9.  Show  why  voters  in  the  largest  city  of  a  county,  a 
state,  or  a  nation  are  under  special  obligation  to  work 
for  socially  minded  and  competent  government. 

10.  Have  enough  discussion,  oral  and  written,  prepared 
and  extempore,  to  bring  to  light  every  student  who 
thinks  "All's  fair  in  politics"  or  who  believes  that  it 
is  not  safe  to  tell  the  public  the  whole  truth  or  to  ad- 
mit mistakes  to  the  public. 

11.  Show  without  fail  how  important  a  part  of  each 
citizen's  life  work  is  his  membership  in  volunteer  civic 
organizations,  and  how  vital  it  is  to  democracy  that 
such  agencies  shall  not  sign  false  oT  ill  considered 
statements  or  otherwise  permit  themselves  to  be 
used  to  assert  untruth,  to  deny  or  evade  truth,  to 
suppress  discussion  or  to  work  against  the  public 
interests. 

12.  Use  current  home  town  problems  to  illustrate  mis- 
takes which  civic  agencies  or  public  officers  are  apt  to 
make  in  dealing  with  the  whole  public. 


V.     Lessons  for  Students  and  Promoters  of  Public  Service 

1.  The  highest  goal  for  reformers  is  public  understanding 
of  official  acts  and  community  needs,  and  is  not  win- 
ning elections  or  securing  temporary  legislative  gains. 

2.  "No  matter  who's  elected"  is  the  only  sound  slogan 
for  the  civic  worker. 

94 


Civic  Lessons  for  Students  and  Promoters 

3.  The  friendliest  thing  the  civic  worker  can  do  for  a 
personal  or  party  friend  in  office  is  to  tell  that  friend 
first,  and  then  the  whole  public,  the  truth  about  official 
acts  gone  wrong  and  community  needs  not  met. 

4.  "The  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
truth"  is  infinitely  safer  than  "As  much  of  the  truth 
as  it  is  safe  to  let  the  public  know." 

5.  Newspapers  need  public  confidence  in  themselves 
more  than  fact-based  reform  needs  newspapers. 

6.  Mitchel  was  killed  politically  by  his  friends,  not  by 
his  enemies. 

7 .  Fusion  reform  was  killed  by  its  friends,  not  by  its 
enemies. 

8.  Civic  agencies  in  New  York  weakened  themselves  tre- 
mendously by  withholding  from  the  public  important 
facts  about  reform's  mistakes. 

9.  Civic  agencies  lost  both  abiliity  and  desire  to  do'  big 
work  when  they  took  public  officers  as  their  clients 
instead  of  the  general  public. 

10.  Progress  comes  from  remembering  and  punishing  mis- 
takes of  officers  and  parties,  plus  taking  benefits  and 
kept  pledges  for  granted,  plus  rewarding  past  benefits 
and  kept  pledges  by  a  greater  measure 
of  confidence  in  future  pledges,  plus  exacting  specific 
pledges  for  the  future. 

11.  Once  having  started  to  have  no  secrets  from  the 
public,  even  political  opponents  will  applaud  and  help 
maintain  that  policy. 

12.  Municipal  progress  throughout  our  country  requires 
that  civic  leaders  show  their  publics  that  under  Mayor 
Mitchel  reform  was  believed  to  have  gone  back  on 
New  York  and  that  New  York  did  not  goi  back  on 
reform. 


95 


Educational    Studies    axd    Reports 

BY 

Institute    fob    Public    Service    Include 

Self-surveying  and  teacher  recruiting 

Who's  Who  and  Why  in  After  War  Education 
Rainbow  Promises  of  Progress  in  Education 
Teacher  Benefits  from  School  Surveys' 
Self  Surveys  by  Teacher  Training  Schools 
Self  Surveys  by  Colleges  and  Universities 
Record  Aids  in  College   Management 
Pick  Your  Prof  or  Getting  By  in  College 
Personalitycullture  by  College  Faculties 

War  civics 

Liberty  the  Giant  Killer 

Stories  of  Americans  in  the  World  War 

War  Pact  Tests 

Civic  Lessons  from  War  Pacts 

Unconditional   Surrender  Civic 

Teachable  Pacts  about  Bolshevism  and  Sovdetism 

Universal  Trainig  for  American  Citizenship 

Field  studies 

High   Spots  in   New  York   Schools 
Budget  studies   for  Virginia 
Reorganization  studies  fOr  Ohio 
Reconstruction   studies  for   Michigan 

Latin  America 

How  Latin  America  Affects  our  Daily  Life 
How  We  Affect  Latin  America's  Daily  Life 

Teacher  recruiting  bulletins 

Barbara  Tries  Teaching 

The  Rewards  of  Teaching 

Teachers   Salaries  a   National   Peril 

Why  not  Teach? 

Why  I  Like  Teaching 

Career  Boundaries  for  American  Girls 

Boys,  After  High  School  What? 

University  Presidents  on  Teacher  Recruiting 

Cartoonist   Ireland   on   Cartooning  Teachers 

Colossal  Growth  of  Higher  Education 


Copyright,   1921  by  Institute  for 
Public  Service,  New  York  City 

96 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


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AMERICA'S  WOMEN 
VOTERS 

QCAN  LEARN  INVALUABLE 
LESSONS  FROM  THE 
AUTO-COLLAPSE  OF  FUSION 
REFORM  IN  NSW  YORK  CITY 
FROM   1914  TO   1917 

qW  I  L  L  R  E  D  E  E  1,1  THE 
PROMISE  OF  "VOTES  FOR 
WOMEN"  ONLY  SO  FAR*  AS 
THEY  SECURE  FOR  PUBLICS 
AND  ELECTED  OFFICERS 
THE  BENEFIT  OF  CONTINU- 
OUS BETWEEN  -  ELECTION 
PUBLICITY  FOR  OFFICIAL 
ACTS  AND  COMMUNITY 
NEEDS  NOT-YET-MET 


